Ryuzo Furukawa

Core scientists and innovation in Japanese electronics companies

SummaryIn this paper we examine the role of what we call core scientists in innovation in Japanese electronics companies. Core scientists are those who have the top total scores as measured by the number of their publications and citations received. We find that even though they may not apply for a large number of patents themselves, the scientific knowledge of the core scientists may have a positive effect in stimulating patent applications by their collaborators.

Forecasting and Backcasting

Will we be able to create new lifestyles extrapolating from the present? If we look at so-called lifestyle hazard maps, this looks difficult. With thinking based on forecasting, which is our conventional approach today, we will not find is easy to change lifestyles. Trying to envision how, based on our present way of living, we might become able to balance consideration for the environment with our desire for a wholesome, fulfilling life is a task that is very hard to solve. As a result of this, we would only be able to find partial solutions and would end up creating eco-dilemmas. What is needed today is thinking based on backcasting. This is thinking which focuses on optimization of the total system, taking the severe environmental constraints likely in 2030 as a basis for the contemplation of wholesome, fulfilling lifestyles.

The Transition to New Lifestyles: Transitional Technology

While global environmental constraints become ever more severe, lifestyles continue to be dominated by a forecasting mentality making a shift in direction difficult. As a result of this, all human activity, including corporate activity, tends towards partial solutions, and since we are not aiming at creating total system solutions, it will be difficult, as the severity of environmental constraints intensifies further, to realize the lifestyles that people deep down desire. While many changes are taking place as a direct result of emerging environmental constraints, the kind of world people truly desire will not be created simply from constraints, and in a worst case scenario, we may, on our own initiative, move further down the path of civilizational collapse.

Pre-war Living in Co-existence with Nature

We have seen how people, unconsciously, seek “enjoyment” and “nature” just as strongly as “convenience” in their lives. What, then, is the nature of these two elements, “enjoyment” and “nature”? Numerous enjoyable things—games, the internet, movies—surround us in everyday life, but what people are yearning for is another form of enjoyment. Or, do people with “nature” mean that they are eager to go to the beach or hiking in the mountains? We do not believe this is the only form of nature people are seeking. In order to clarify the true meaning of “nature” and “enjoyment” in everyday life, we conducted a series of interviews with people around the age of 90 (below, nonagenarians) and made a qualitative analysis of the pre-war living in co-existence with nature. Through these interviews, we discovered more than 70 different pieces of wisdom or techniques of living in co-existence with nature. We found that “knowing that you are being kept alive by nature, knowing how to utilize nature, and knowing how to deal with the challenges nature puts forth” are like three origins of the Japanese way of living. These precious pieces of wisdom and techniques are the essence of a wisdom of life that the natural world in general possesses, which allows people to connect with nature, and which in structure resembles low impact technologies.

The Pursuit of Nature and Enjoyment: The Contours of a Wholesome, Fulfilling Lifestyle

The unconscious desire people have for nature and enjoyment was beautifully expressed in pre-war living, and we can thus say that pre-war lifestyles included such elements as nature, enjoyment and a sense of belonging to society. It has also become clear, though, that citizens of today would not find it easy to return to pre-war ways of living. The notion of the irreversibility of (perceptions of) quality of life makes it obvious that elements of life such as a sense of modernity and convenience are deemed to be insufficient. From the viewpoint of the values people espouse today, these two elements were not sufficiently present in pre-war living. While we may say that a positive future is best created from the nostalgia of a (supposedly) golden past, it is not easy to actually reshape the ways of living of old—with their unity with nature and built-in enjoyment—into future lifestyles. The role of lifestyle design is not to promote a return to the past, but to envision new lifestyles that incorporate updated versions of useful elements found in old ways of living. How, actually, to introduce such elements as, for example, enjoyment found in pre-war living into future lifestyles is a big task, but the interviews we conducted with people around the age of 90 (below, nonagenarians), and the results of our analysis of 2030 lifestyles provide a broad outline of the structure of such future lifestyles. Taking severe, environmental constraints as a point of departure, wholesome, fulfilling lifestyles are built on three pillars: (1) convenience, (2) a nature that has aesthetic and cultural value, and (3) the recognition that constraints help both yourself and others grow and urge you to nurture nature. Apparently, overcoming constraints gives birth to enjoyment and a sense of fulfillment in people’s lives.

The New World Created with Nature Technology

Technology created with a Nature Technology development system harnessing the amazing powers of nature has its roots in lifestyles, is simple and easy to understand, has an inherent view of nature, encourages communication and provokes affection in the user. Today, on the basis of lifestyles envisioned with backcasting, many examples of such Nature Technology have been or are being created: An air conditioner without a power supply which learns from termites; a waterless bath learning from the mechanism of foam; a wind generator revolving even in a slight breeze learning from the wings of a dragonfly; and a kitchen garden system which, learning from the diversity of microorganisms, needs no pesticides. And, following these examples, many more technologies are being created right now, one after another. These are technologies created from lifestyles based on backcasting and do not involve any “black boxes”, neither are they merely substituting one technology for another. They are not technologies intended solely to realize comfort and convenience, but rather ones that allow for humans to live wholesome, fulfilling lives while regaining some of the skills lost through the “outsourcing” that has taken place in the last few centuries. And, they are technologies which may either help change lifestyles directly, or provide opportunities for people to change lifestyles. For such reasons, we can say that these new technologies will enable us to create thrilling and exciting lifestyles that are also wholesome and fulfilling.

Lifestyles Envisioned with Backcasting

Of the lifestyles we outlined using backcasting, those in which nature was present in people’s lives and where there was a sense of belonging to society had the greatest degree of social acceptability. Even when there is a slight sense of inconvenience, this is exceeded by the multitude of joys experienced in such a way of living. When we do cluster analysis of the lifestyles with high social acceptability, we find that factors such as “nature”, “enjoyment”, “self-growth”, and “a sense of belonging to society” are included, indicating that these are elements that people, along with “convenience”, unconsciously seek in their lives. Just as if they were yearning for childhood experiences—the good old days—people today unconsciously desire nature and enjoyment as much as convenience, and this could very well be one of the best motivations to start creating new lifestyles.

A New Way of Manufacturing and Living

In order to create a sustainable society, we must acknowledge the need for manufacturing and living that take both the Earth and people into consideration at the same time. Respect for the Earth means the establishment of a resource-cyclical society, respect for people means acknowledging their desires in life. Human desire is characterized by the irreversibility of (perceptions of) quality of life. The nature of our desires is such that once we have gained a certain level of comfort or convenience, we are not readily willing to let go of it. In order to think affirmatively of both a resource-cyclical society and the irreversibility of quality of life, we need technologies that can help bring about new ways of living. This also necessitates the creation of a new set of values, which can effectively counter the common sense of conventional technology, namely that the aim of technological development is to gain convenience and comfort with the smallest possible input of effort and time. We need an approach to technology which does not use scarce resources mined from the Earth’s crust, processed at high temperature and high pressure to realize comfort and convenience while fuelling material greed, but which learns from nature using resources found in abundance above the Earth’s surface, processing these at room temperature and normal pressure to provide exciting new ways of living that enable spiritual fulfillment. Nature is the only perfectly sustainable system found on Earth. Only a technology that learns from nature and has nature built into it will be able to realize ways of living that allow for truly wholesome, fulfilling lives.

Manufacturing That Takes Nature into Account: The Shape of Nature Technology

Envisioning wholesome, fulfilling lifestyles full of excitement even in the face of the severe environmental constraints of 2030, then searching in nature for the technologies required to make with vision come true—this is the new approach to manufacturing: Nature Technology. Why search for answers in nature? The reason is twofold: one is that nature, through a continuous process of natural selection, has achieved the optimum form of evolution adapted to the various local and global environments through time and has done this in a system of perfect cycles driven with a minimal input of energy. This is indeed the “sustainable society” which humanity, despite lofty ideals, is still far from achieving—created by nature with the use of solar energy and the abundance of things found on Earth’s surface. We, humans, need to re-learn the mechanisms and systems—as well as the social process of creative destruction—found in nature. A second reason is that the modern technology created as a result of the industrial revolution starting in Great Britain succeeded only by removing itself and thus humans from nature, and as a result thereof is intricately linked to the emergence of global environmental problems.

The True Nature of the Global Environmental Problem

Energy—we have clearly already passed peak oil; biodiversity—we are using 150 % of the reproductive capacity of the ecosystem; global warming—the dispersion of aerosols into the stratosphere, a measure that once initiated must be continued indefinitely, is being discussed as a realistic countermeasure. Have we not lost sight of the true nature of the global environmental problem? Excluding issues that relate to the social sciences, we can identify seven major environmental risks facing humanity today. They are the depletion of energy and resources, the deterioration of biodiversity, the distribution of water and food, the rapidly increasing global population, and climate change most often experienced as global warming. These risks are all extremely important, but were they also risks 100 years, or even 50 years ago? What has made them such severe risks that they may threaten the very continuation of civilization? That, indeed, is the real global environmental problem.