Whatever's work style creates the future a little ahead.

With the theme of social good, NOMURA GROUP, which is accelerating sustainable business activities with the aim of contributing to society through business, will hold "Social Good Week 2021 Winter" following "Social Good Week 2021 Summer" held in July last year. "has been held. One of them is a talk event titled "Inspiration Talk", in which we invite key persons engaged in pioneering initiatives on the theme of social good to hear hints and ideas for solving social issues. (Date: January 14, 2022)

We invited Mr. Yusuke Tominaga, CEO of Whatever, a creative studio that develops a variety of activities that transcend regions and genres, as a guest to hear about examples of advanced initiatives and hints for social good activities.

Photo (left) NOMURA Co., Ltd. Ryusuke Nomura, (right) Whatever CEO/Co-Founder Yusuke Tominaga

Guest Speaker Yusuke Tominaga
Whatever CEO/Co-Founder
He specializes in cross-sectional production such as advertising, music videos, IoT, fashion, art exhibitions, and TV. In addition to running the creative studio Whatever, he invested in COTODAMA, which develops Lyric Speaker, and BASSDRUM, the world's first technical director collective, and established WTFC through joint investment with Tohokushinsha. His life work is to create loose networks between creators.

Host Speaker Ryusuke Nomura
NOMURA Co., Ltd. Planner/Creative Director
Engaged in development of commercial facilities, regional revitalization, concept planning of workplace space design, etc. I also worked on the direction of the communication space that was the venue for today.

What is Whatever

Whatever is a creative studio established in January 2019 through the merger of digital creative production company dot×dot and creative agencies based in New York and Taiwan, PARTY New York and PARTY Taipei. There are 54 members, and it is a multinational composition, mainly Japanese. In addition to Tokyo, New York, and Taipei, we have shared offices in Berlin, and we are making things globally across time zones.
YouTube Whatever Channel

Tominaga
"Make Whatever. Rules, Whatever." expresses their style. In Japanese, "Make Whatever." means "make anything", and "Rules, Whatever." Create anything without rules! is our company.
 

Whatever's six working styles

1	ignore the genre
	Think freely and create with attention to detail
	Think free and cross-genre. Deliver with attention to details.

Tominaga
We place great importance on ignoring genres and thinking freely, paying close attention to detail. From small things like stuffed animals to large things like permanent amusement facilities, the feature is that they make everything from the idea to the final stage by themselves.

Left: Stuffed Guts inside a Puppet.
Right: Permanent installation in a maze of hedges inside JEWEL at Singapore Changi Airport.

Nomura
For this kind of thing, the idea first comes out, and then the prototype is made. How long is the production period?

Tominaga
Very short. CG can be made in a few days. Another feature of our company is that we can quickly create prototypes in-house.
 

2	Beyond borders and races
	Making things on the world stage
	We make things on the global stage across borders and races.

Tominaga
The second style is to make things on the world stage, transcending national borders and races.

Nike's Unlimited Stadium in Manila, Philippines. Based on the idea of a track and field stadium where you can compete infinitely with yourself, we designed an interactive track and field stadium imitating the infinity symbol (∞) and the shape of the sole of NIKE running shoes.

A campaign to convey the convenience of a translation app called Google Translate (Goggle translation) in New York. "Restaurant where English is not understood" is open to the public for free, and you can order by looking at the menu written in multiple languages other than English with a translation app.

3	No end to prototyping and demos
	Doing up to the point of delivering our own products to customers
	Go beyond the prototypes and experiments.

Tominaga
We don't just create prototypes, we also create final products and deliver them to our customers. Creating your own product is difficult, but you can gain knowledge that you cannot acquire through commissioned work, such as research capabilities, pricing, delivery networks, and PR. In addition, our products may lead to advertising projects.

​WEAR YOUARE is a service that creates original T-shirts using satellite images taken by JAXA's earth observation satellite "DAICHI".

Ultimately, “Doodle AR” became the number one paid app ranking in the world in 2020. An application that uses augmented reality technology. When you load a picture you have drawn on your smartphone, the picture pops out in the AR space and starts to move.
It became a hot topic and achieved 460,000 downloads in 5 days.

4	through investments, dispatch of engineers, alliances, etc.
	Exciting manufacturing in areas that our company cannot do on its own
	Make alliances where we can't do it alone.

Tominaga
When we cannot do it on our own, we actively invest, dispatch engineers, form alliances, and create joint ventures.

A Lyric Speaker that displays the lyrics of the song that is playing. Developed with the Hakuhodo team in 2015, won the BEST BOOTSTRAP COMPANY at SXSW (South by Southwest), received investment and commercialized.

Opened New Stand Tokyo on the 1st floor of the head office in partnership with New York shop New Stand. We also handle a product group called Femtech that solves women's social issues and sexual health issues with ideas and technology.

Tominaga
New Stand Tokyo is characterized by the fact that it has not spread to the world yet, but it also handles items that should spread as daily necessities in the future and Femtech, a product group that solves women's wellness issues.

Nomura
I think it's wonderful that you're prepared to go to a real shop even though you can shop online.

Tominaga
I wanted to prepare a place where I could actually touch the products and convey what I couldn't get across on the internet. This shop is experimenting with the future rather than making a profit. I also place great importance on dealing with things that have a social nature. I think it matches the theme of Social Good Week, but there are many ethical products.

5	towards the future
	R&Dand consulting

Tominaga
Since we are making new products ourselves, we have recently been involved in product development for companies, and we are also doing R&D and consulting work for the future.

For SONY's game machine called toio, we participated from the prototyping stage, developing manufacturing that could not be done inside the company.

 

6	Create an environment that makes it fun
	Be the environment for joyful creation.

Nomura
Has the ratio of commissioned work and your product out changed?

Tominaga
Unfortunately, 90% and 80% are still entrusted. However, when we made "Doodle AR" in 2000, we were able to reduce the entrusted ratio, and since we are making several IPs, we think we can reduce the entrusted ratio a little more.

Nomura
Are there more jobs that you have been able to get because you put your own products out and come up with ideas?

Tominaga
Yes, it is increasing. I don't think companies would have partnered with us if they hadn't made their own products.

Nomura
Earlier, you said that by developing products in-house, you would be able to acquire knowledge that you would not be able to acquire through outsourced projects. I would like to continue this kind of initiative at NOMURA Co., Ltd.

Tominaga
I've been making advertisements for a long time, and I've been making things that will disappear in a short period of time.

Nomura
Really. That's not sustainable.

Tominaga
That's right. When I think about creating something that will last forever, I gradually move away from advertising.
At first, it was mainly related to advertising, but now it's about 20%. The remaining 60% are creating content. That's the part that changed a lot. In terms of the remaining part, about 10% is R&D and about 5% is changing to consulting work. Little by little, I'm moving away from advertising and focusing on manufacturing.

Creating new mechanisms to change society

Nomura
Whatever, together with Professor Takebe of Yokohama City University, you are working not only on manufacturing things, but also on creating a social system called "Enabling City". Do you think that society will not improve unless we do so?

Tominaga
Before talking about the Enabling City, in 2013, we installed a "tactile search" that combines an Internet search function and a 3D printer at the University of Tsukuba School for the Blind. However, since it was part of an advertising campaign, it ended after three months, and after that, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology approved it and provided a budget for it, which lasted for three years, but ended. I'm so sorry, why can't you continue when you're so social good! I have always had this thought.

(Video touch search) YouTube Yahoo! JAPAN channel

I believe that if an index for evaluating society based on social good is created, the world will become a better place, and society will be able to achieve things that people have not been able to achieve before. So now, together with Dr. Takanori Takebe, we are starting a demonstration experiment of a new urban image, Enabling City, that realizes well-being.

Nomura
The idea behind the enabling city was based on an approach to well-being, and I found it interesting that not only health but also happiness is important. It would be very easy to understand if there is an index that clearly organizes it and visualizes it for each area. I believe that we can move toward a more sustainable society if we can see issues through indicators.

Tominaga
That's right. I think it would be difficult to continue without indicators.
We hope that this project will be adopted by the Cabinet Office as one of the "moonshot goals," which aims to solve difficult social issues such as the declining birthrate, aging population, and global warming with bold ideas in the future society. I am aiming.
I believe that the Enabling City business is an area that is closely related to NOMURA Co., Ltd. 's business. It would be interesting if we could do something together in the future.

Nomura
thank you. I think there are many ideas for solving social issues. It is necessary to create a system that will not end it as a one-off, but will continue.

to think about the future

Nomura
Whatever's activities are interesting and unique in that they think for themselves, create their own work, and form alliances to do what they can't do on their own. I once again felt that this method is necessary in the future.
Lastly, I would like to ask you one question. Mr. Tominaga, what do you think is important in thinking about the theme of this time, "the future a little further ahead"?

Tominaga
In order to think about the future, I think that if we don't do R&D first, we won't be able to release things at the right time. For example, Robot Viewing is a self-propelled robot equipped with a camera and a monitor.

A new system is incorporated into a telepresence robot called Double, allowing users to participate in art exhibitions and events remotely. This is just at the time of Corona, and many museums have requested it and introduced it. Even now, there are inquiries about introducing it to the office, and it is a situation where it is manufactured and shipped.

Robot Viewing launched in 2020, but I actually developed a product quite similar to this in 2018. That is a product called Telethings, which is based on the same robot as Robot Viewing, and I thought it would be possible to have physical communication, which is the most lacking when talking to a remote location. Attached functions such as throwing soap bubbles and ping-pong balls that can be worn, and throwing bills. When I made this, I thought it would be well received, but it didn't spread at all. For some reason, the world wasn't used to telework yet. I haven't experienced telepresence, so I didn't know what I was missing. That's why I didn't grow at all for two years, but the moment I entered the corona era, I was able to present it to the world as Robot Viewing.

Timing is important. We need to prepare to release the product at that timing. That's why prototyping is so important. We had experience with Telethings, so we were able to bring out Robot Viewing at just the right time.

Even if you look for what you need now, you won't find what you need in the future.

Tominaga
We are in a period of change, so we can do whatever we want. Robots that coexist with humans, such as Robot Viewing, were once said to be dangerous. Nowadays, it's easy to get recognition as technology, so if you're an engineer and you have an idea that you've been secretly warming up, it might be a chance to come up with it. I think it's important to take stock of such ideas once.
Even if you only look for what you need now, you won't find what you need in the future. I think that it is required to explore from the point of whether or not this is really necessary, and to think and make it.

Nomura
thank you. The hour and a half went by in a blink of an eye as we listened to a really interesting story. I'm really looking forward to Whatever-san's future activities.

---

Mr. Tominaga's story, which has a positive impact on society through the power of creativity, gathers friends and creates systems regardless of place or genre, was rich in suggestions for social good. it might be. I was very impressed by his talk, "By doing everything from prototyping to product creation in-house, you can acquire a variety of knowledge that you can't acquire in commissioned projects." NOMURA GROUP will also actively promote R&D activities and co-creation with people outside the company, aiming to contribute to society through the creation of new mechanisms and businesses, looking toward the "future in the near future." (NOMURA Co., Ltd. Social Good Strategy Department)