The Future of Life Co-creation Project 2025 was launched in 2021, under the guidance of its thematic project producer, ISHIGURO Hiroshi, and with the generous support of seven participating companies (HASEKO Corporation, KOKUYO Co.,Ltd., SHIONOGI & Co., Ltd., Sysmex Corporation, Japan Federation of Kaigo Business Providers Consortium Expo 2025, DENSO CORPORATION, and Hankyu Hanshin Holdings, Inc.). The Project looks at how society and life might be in fifty years’ time, and some of these ideas will be incorporated as future scenarios and technologies for the Future of Life signature pavilion.
To heighten the cohesiveness as a team depicting the future together, and to spread ideas horizontally across companies, in addition to Individual Company Co-creation Meetings at each company, All-Company Co-creation Meetings are held for each project milestone, and members from all companies take part. In this report, we present some of the group discussions and issue presentations of the All-Company Co-creation Meeting.

Creating Specific Images for Fifty Years Hence

At the first All-Company Co-creation Meeting, all participating members brought their wishes for what they wanted to see achieved fifty years from now, and were divided randomly into groups, where they delved deeply into wishes that they had a lot of interest or knowledge about. These wishes included things like “A world with robots/AI as our partners” and “A society where human life is supported by preventive treatment and education support robots,” and, through feedback and exchange of opinions from the perspectives of each company (field), we looked for specific images. We discussed the reason of existence of these wishes, their value, the issues needed to fulfill these wishes, and the socially-accepted ideas that will change if these wishes do come about. Ishiguro provided feedback that included the comment that “no matter how convenient the world becomes through science and technology, I believe it is culture that most vividly expresses how people live, their lives, feeling, and awareness, so ‘culture’ will become a future key word.”

Share what each company is considering, and broaden ideas

At the second All-Company Co-creation Meeting, the discussions held at the various Individual Company Co-creation Meetings were summarized and presented by the individual companies. Based on theses, a group discussion was held to consider “future socially-accepted ideas” and “technologies and services to focus on,” and to clarify our images of them. The group discussion identified similarities and differences in the content of these individual co-creation meetings, and through combining ideas, lead to an enhanced vision of how each company saw the future. Within a few hours, discussions were held and then presentations given. It was a very enriching time, with lively exchanges of ideas and opinions from all sorts of backgrounds and perspectives. Through repeated dialogue, we reconfirmed that we all had the same awareness of the issues. Focusing on how the flow of time moves to one in which the actual activities of people are emphasized, Ishiguro remarked that “mobility” and “data” would become important in order to bring about future scenarios. He also noted that mobility within expansive spaces, both physical and virtual, might be a type of evolution.

Along with sharing the ideas and future scenarios of each company, the All-company Co-creation Meeting also compared and adjusted futures among the companies, accelerating the creation of a solid future. By holding these meetings at every future milestone of the Project, we shall form a cohesive Project Team, together depicting our bold wishes for a future fifty years hence.