When I was appointed CTO in 2019, I delivered the technology strategy of “the creation of a future connecting people and spacetime” as my message. In order to achieve this message, in 2021 we established the technology development strategy of “R&D²”—Research, Development, and Design—together with New Medium-Term Management Plan VISION 2023. This strategy and plan are defined as one of the essential elements of the JVCKENWOOD Group's value creation: how to design and deliver research and development results to the world.
Furthermore, in the VISION 2025 Medium-Term Management Plan for 2023, we have declared "strengthening customer-oriented design management," as a challenge to create new value. We will accelerate the open innovation sparked by the chemical reaction between the R&D function axis, which contributes to business through our proprietary technologies and intellectual properties, and marketing that is specialized in the market and customer-oriented.

The JVCKENWOOD Group has been introducing the world’s first and industry-leading products that create excitement and peace of mind one after another since its founding as an electronics manufacturer. To respond to the rapidly and intricately changing needs of the world and the fierce market environment, our R&D will focus on technologies that honestly respond to the five senses and sensibilities of people. We aim to achieve "design management" by strengthening our human resources and intellectual property to generate innovation and discover new business opportunities and then disclosing this externally.

In July 2021, we established the Future Creation Research Institute as a cornerstone of R&D². While we have had a technology development department, the Future Creation Research Institute aims to be a more future-oriented, social problem-solving organization, as implied by its name. The topics addressed by the Future Creation Research Institute are all linked to SDGs, and a clear explanation regarding how contributions will be made to society can be provided.

Based on our core technologies of visuals, audio, communication and design, the Future Creation Research Institute will work on hypothesis testing more than ever before with an aim of creating new value that connects people, time and space without being bound by our existing business. While it may take time for our initiatives to take form, or we may at times fail, the accumulation of such efforts will become an asset. Making effective use of this asset is also a key point. I would like the Future Creation Research Institute to work toward achieving social prosperity, and to this end, we need to proactively consider how to enhance the market value of our accumulated technologies and intellectual property. We will not only focus on the implementation of products and services of our business but also consider utilizations in different domains as required, and as a research institute, strengthen collaborations with external parties, including industry-academia collaboration and partnerships with different industries. By securing multiple ways of utilizing new technologies and intellectual property, we hope that our engineers will be able to spread their wings for new creations without fear of failure. 

In October 2023, we established the Innovation Design Center as a new organization to develop an interface for the creation and discovery of new business opportunities and implement the development of service infrastructure. By multiplying the new ideas generated from friction at the interface with people through thorough marketing by the Company's technological capabilities, we will implement customer-oriented design management, creating a chemical reaction in an accelerated manner and realizing customer needs.

In order for the JVCKENWOOD Group to become an essential member of society, we will return to the origin of our foundation and promote research and development activities that genuinely address the instincts and desires of people. In order to solve social issues using technology while continuing to be an organization that constantly looks to the future, we believe that our greatest responsibility is to create an environment where all engineers involved, from the planning and development to the production and quality assurance of products and services, can hold free discussions and absorb themselves in Monozukuri, while achieving the goals we establish as a company.