Olympus Corporation PROJECT

Foundation of open innovation
Practicing a co-creation in OPC Hack & Make project

Outline

The challenge of creating an open innovation starting with a rough sketch.

On February 5, 2015, the Olympus Corporation unveiled the Olympus Air A01, an open platform camera ("OPC"). Roughly five years prior, it was a conceptual rough sketch. A new concept of the camera was born: a camera that connects to your smartphone and can do everything from taking photos to processing and uploading them to social networking sites. It was Loftwork Inc.'s "OPC Hack & Make Project" that made this possible. This is an exploratory project for a new imaging experience that tackles the theme of open innovation through co-creation.

Project overview

Support content
Kick-off meeting/ Product concept development
CI development/ Brand site building
Community building
Planning and operation event

System
Client: Olympus Corporation
Producer: Hajime Matsui
Creative Director： Shoma Terai／Hiroki Tanahashi
PR Director: Mayumi Ishikawa

Process

Kick-off meeting/ Product concept development

We started the workshop at the beginning of the project. For the first three months, the Olympus Corporation and Loftwork Inc. held weekly workshops together for a total of seven times and discussed product concept and promotion with the team in the early stage while the aim of the project was not established.

Community building

We held regular meetup to recruit participants and increase fans and “creating the value together” with creators and developers from outside of Loftwork Inc. Specifically, “hacker” developers and “maker” creators become community-focused OPC fans who use the OPC to form an “OPC community” for building a brand-new camera. The scenario involved us creating an “OPC community” through which developers (coming from “hacker” background) and creators (coming from a “maker” background) would use the OPC to create a brand-new camera and become community-focused OPC fans.

Also, we held the venue, creative exhibition and product launch party with Loftwork for supporting community and communication design.

Planning and operation event

The prototype event was open to the public at Engadget Fes 2014, we prepared a wide range of materials for introducing our project.

We prepared different tools for the event: the website, diagrams, stickers, staff jerseys, an exhibition panel, an idea contest form, etc. to explain our concept. The aim was to express an atmosphere that was integral to our project with the creative concept of “a club where adults of a similar age can gather and get excited about building things.” For example, we turned the website into an instruction manual for the OPC tool to get people excited before they were even building.

Outputs

CI development/ Brand site building

Movie

Member

Hajime Matsui

Loftwork Inc.
Layout CLO（Chief Layout Officer）

Profile

Shoma Terai

Loftwork Inc.
Kyoto Branch Business Manager

Profile

Hiroki Tanahashi

Loftwork Inc.
Innovation Maker

Profile

Voice

“It's my task to handle things as they move from research development to the business department, but I intend to see everything to the end, as the success of this project lies in the belief that open innovation can succeed. I am simply delighted that we have made it to the product release, but I already see a new issue. I'm already consulting with Sato about what to do with our subsequent timing.”

オリンパス株式会社技術開発部門　モバイルシステム開発本部画像技術部　研究１グループ石井謙介氏

“There is no certainty that innovation will occur should manufacturers continue working as they always have. Engage with a passion that you and some peers share, play around with some ideas, and then try them out in a project. These four Ps create an indispensable endless cycle. All I can do is inject that essence into a project and share it, not with businesses, but with the general public from an ideal. You have to build things up by talking with your peers, not by thinking in a vacuum. The game now revolves around how many users will help us universalize OPCs for the general public.”

オリンパス株式会社事業開発室　事業開発第2本部　事業開発2部　開発グループ佐藤明伸氏

Interview

Mr. Kensuke Ishii and Mr. Akinobu Sato from Olympus Corporation started to incubate the same concept in different places. Hajime Matsui, Yuya Tanaka, Mayumi Ishikawa, Shoma Terai, and Tomoko Sekiguchi from Loftwork Inc. are partners in the production process of manufacturers. We invited them to share the experience in this challenging project.

The challenge of creating an open innovation starting with a rough sketch. OPC Hack & Make project interview