mini传媒

Published on September 28, 2021
Job titles and other details are as of the time of publication.
(The interview was conducted in Japanese and was thereafter translated into English.)

Importance of industrial product design as a means of value creation and expression

In May 2018, the Japan Patent Office in the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry published a report titled the “Design-Driven Management Declaration” outlining the challenges and measures to strengthen design-driven competitiveness of businesses. The report stressed the desirability for public policy to recognize the value of design activities, and to more actively promote design-driven product and service development as well as organizational reforms through integrating design activities into their strategies. With the growing need to establish a system promoting design activities, the importance of products’ exterior forms (industrial design) as a means of creating and expressing value is increasing. However, Japan is currently in a difficult position in terms of international industrial design competitiveness as emerging economies are becoming ever more competitive.

To find a breakthrough to this challenge, I conduct empirical research on intellectual property management and policy. My research especially deals with intellectual property management focusing on the design creation process and intellectual property laws that include patent and design patent laws. Design covers different domains depending on its definition, and some design fields are beyond my domain. This article focuses on product design, but first let me introduce myself.

Choosing law as my major to speak out on software copyright

During my high school years, I joined the science club where I programmed simple games and competed with other members. Some of my junior members later landed jobs at Sony and Google, and the club activity was quite exciting.

At that time, Software copyright was drawing the attention of programmer communities. Once protected, copyrights cannot be used or modified without permission for 50 to 100 years. Unlike classical works of art such as paintings, software is a product subject to modification and update. Programmers raised their voices, saying it was nonsense that software could not be freely used and modified. Feeling the same way, I decided out of youthful passion to study and speak out on the issue. I enrolled in the faculty of law at university and joined a seminar on copyrights in my first year.

However, my ambition was immediately thwarted. While copyright law prohibits modifications without permission, there were no problems with software copyright, depending on how the copyright system was applied. For example, contracts can be made to allow free use of software or to waive copyright protection. I was in total despair. However, I became interested in the operation of the copyright system and continued studying intellectual property until I completed a master’s program in the subject.

Meeting Japan’s design system through consulting work

I learned about an empirical approach to social scientific issues while studying the limits of copyrights in a master’s program. Wondering if there was a limit to legal approaches based on individual cases, I was advised by a senior colleague working on the topic through an economic approach to explore economic models that could explain some aspects and to verify them based on past court cases. That was how I became interested in economic approaches, particularly econometric approaches.

At a social gathering, I heard about Mitsubishi Research Institute (MRI) from an official in charge of intellectual property policy at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. I was told that the institute had an edge in science and technology policies, and provided the opportunity to address the challenge of connecting the legal system to innovation. I decided to join MRI to pursue a better way of using the system based on data, and immersed myself in product design protection and creation, namely, the design system.

At that time, the design system was operating in a niche field accessed by only a few think tanks including MRI. As the institute’s policy consultant, I was mainly involved in the design system, and my clients and I inspired each other to deepen our interest in this field.

Designers’ distinctive talents can contribute to a breakthrough for Japanese companies

However, as I gained more experience, I realized how far behind I was the talented senior consultants. I had the arrogance to believe that I could enhance my skills just by outlining what I saw and heard, but I also recognized my lack of ability to make effective proposals to address the basic needs of clients. Superior consultants offered proposals based on their own philosophies to meet such needs. So I took a break in my career and enrolled in a doctoral program in the University of Tokyo Department of Technology Management for Innovation, where I explored ways to utilize intellectual property for business in terms of technology management.

My experience as a consultant has taught me that managers and employees do not necessarily act under technology management alone. While policy is used to promote design, I learned during my master’s studies that legal approaches alone are also insufficient for design proposal. Seeking another key element, I was drawing up a list of outstanding products of inventions and their inventors during a seminar on Sony, when I noticed that designers were also on the list. Besides Sony, Hitachi was the only company I was able to access to make a similar list.

I wondered if new ideas could be generated when not only engineers and marketers but also designers with distinctive talents contribute to product development. I also questioned whether the creation of such a working environment depended on how an organization is structured. I believed an in-depth examination of these questions might lead to a breakthrough for changing the current status of Japanese goods losing ground to foreign products. A series of ongoing research efforts was based on my ambition to devise ways to bring about and manage the creative and innovative ideas of designers.

Considering the design system to be one of the keys to promotion, I studied its institutional aspects. Design systems differ from country to country, but the Japanese system is well developed and holds its own in comparison with other countries. The problem stems from industrial design in Japan growing slowly and being promoted by only a limited number of businesses, which can be blamed on companies responsible for creating designs. Japanese firms tend to avoid risks, and ideas are not developed into products when a single person raises an objection in the consensus-building process, resulting in only conservatively designed products entering the market. This tendency has caused the expertise of talented designers from major Japanese manufacturers to be transferred to aspiring foreign firms and engineers. The Japan Patent Office took this situation seriously and published the “Design-Driven Management Declaration” report, as mentioned at the beginning. It is urgent for the country to rejuvenate its design-driven international competitiveness.

A university with faculties of commerce and management, economics, law, and social sciences offers a valuable environment to research the interface between systems and management

Hitotsubashi University presents a valuable environment for me to address this issue. After discovering a breakthrough in the connection between systems and management, I had the opportunity to work at the university, where I pursue my research grateful for the school’s various programs.

Hitotsubashi University is a small school specializing in social sciences, with the Faculty of Commerce and Management, the Faculty of Economics, the Faculty of Law, and the Faulty of Social Sciences. Students can utilize the many resources accumulated by each faculty: the Faculty of Commerce and Management provides the knowledge of organizational bases for innovation; the Faculty of Economics possesses a model of knowledge for negotiating with governments and organizations; the Faculty of Law has legal knowledge for utilizing intellectual property systems that include the design system; and the Faculty of Social Sciences offers sociological knowledge for marketing. To advance technological research, students can turn to the Union of Four Universities in Tokyo (Tokyo Medical and Dental University, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Tokyo Institute of Technology, and Hitotsubashi University).

I have explained how useful Hitotsubashi University is from the perspective of my own expertise, and students who have yet to choose their areas of specialization can take full advantage of this positive learning environment. If students realize what they are studying is not enough, I encourage them to pause and start over by selecting what is missing in their studies from among the range of programs offered by the university. By repeating this approach, students will be able to demonstrate flexible decision-making skills – at a level equivalent to those acquired at a business school in a year or two – when they begin to work. I have seen such hardworking people at Hitotsubashi University Business School. It is my hope that students will continue to study as diligently as they do.