A project to envision
the future
for the entire Sony Group

“Together with creators, we aim to seamlessly connect multi-layered worlds at the point where the physical and the virtual overlap, delivering limitless Kando through the power of creativity and technology.” This is how Sony Group President, COO and CFO Hiroki Totoki verbalized the Creative Entertainment Vision at the Corporate Strategy Meeting 2024. He emphatically unveiled a roadmap to the future imagined in the concept video for the Creative Entertainment Vision, Sony’s aspirations for the next 10 years.

The vision itself took over two years to create, with Totoki working closely with people from various parts of the Sony Group. Creative Center designers from a diversity of backgrounds joined forces with specialists in fields across the spectrum, Totoki and other top executives, and a mix of other contributors from different areas and perspectives to map out the path Sony should take as a creative entertainment company. Through numerous probing discussions, the team translated ideas into a design-driven conceptualization that would crystallize the way forward.

For the designers, the project was also about building deeper trust with management and enhancing their roles as a creative hub linking the myriad fields the Sony Group operates in. How did the project, with that far-reaching scope, come to fruition? In this interview, three of the project’s core designers share their insights on the overall process—along with the breakthroughs and challenges they encountered along the way.

The Creative Entertainment Vision is the long-term vision for where Sony wants to be in 10 years. Could you tell us about what inspired the vision and how the Creative Center came to play a role in developing it?

AkagawaThe vision we designed is different from the short- and medium-term business plans Sony usually announces at Corporate Strategy Meetings. It takes a longer-term viewpoint to draw broader strokes and outline the path toward Sony's Purpose: "fill the world with emotion, through the power of creativity and technology." It was two years ago when Totoki asked us to work up a roadmap for the next decade at Sony, focusing on cross-business collaboration. That was how the project got started—and for us at the Creative Center, it was a bit like diving into the deep end.

MoriyaThe 10-year time frame really set this project apart. It wasn't just about predicting what the future might look like—it was about imagining the future we wanted to create and then backcasting to figure out the steps to get there. As designers, we worked closely with Totoki, leaders from different business areas, and other key figures to see if our ideas were feasible, refined them, and gathered all those deeper insights and perspectives together into a cohesive whole. The concept video obviously meant a lot—but the process leading there was huge, too.

FujitaOne thing Totoki said really resonated with me: he wanted us to "design a bright, positive, exciting future." It's obviously a pretty big challenge to dream up what a group company of Sony's size should look like 10 years into the future, especially with how fast technology and society are changing. But Totoki’s words about capturing an optimistic outlook became an anchor for us, I think.

Communicating effectively with management from a design perspective must come with its own share of challenges, too. Have Creative Center designers helped develop organizational visions before, giving them the experience to navigate the process?

AkagawaThese last few years, the Creative Center has been getting more and more chances to work on vision development; there was the project to redefine the vision for the mobile business and another to formulate one for Sony Semiconductor Solutions. People liked what our design expertise and track record brought to the projects, giving us some positive recognition that put us in position to take on the vision initiative for the Sony Group.

FujitaI've also been fortunate enough to work on projects with connections to Sony Corporation's corporate branding, which involved similar processes. The steps leading up to recent Corporate Strategy Meetings are a good example, too: designers have been part of the discussions, contributing through tools like graphic recording to chart out messages. That’s also brought us closer together with management, which helped us draw good attention and pave the way for our role in the Creative Entertainment Vision.

Merging future forecasts
and Sci-Fi prototyping
to give shape to core concepts

The Sony Group spans a wide range of business segments, including game & network services, music, pictures, and entertainment, technology & services. In working to foster as much communication as possible across that scope, how did the project go about bringing people from different areas on board?

AkagawaTotoki reached out to get emerging and mid-level leaders from Sony business units involved, and everybody sat down with people from the Creative Center for discussions on how to move forward. We made a point of including lots of younger designers on our side, knowing that they’d be envisioning a decade they were going to be responsible for shaping. With Fujita and other up-and-coming designers in a central role, bringing both experience and youth to the table, we also enlisted the help of Moriya and other capable designers who could offer expertise spanning product, UI, and vision development. Altogether, we got about 10 people on board and set things in motion.

MoriyaThe project timeline had two phases. Phase 1, fiscal 2022, involved research, ideation, and concept development; fiscal 2023 was Phase 2, which focused on fine-tuning the concepts, prototyping in the leadup to going public with the roadmap, and doing the actual production work. I joined the project at the initial research stage, and I remember gaping at this wall full of ideas they already had—it was obvious that the team had a real passion for a project with a full 10-year scope and a healthy supply of unique, original ideas.

FujitaDuring the first ideation stages, people were brainstorming ideas from across the spectrum as a way of sparking the thinking process—and it worked. What stood out to me in those discussions was how we didn’t get too caught up in predicting the future with a view to social issues like climate change or the technologies of the future. Instead, the focus had a more personal dimension: what kind of future do we, as individual people, want to create? That approach set this project apart from typical design work, where we normally start with clear, predetermined goals for specific products and services.

AkagawaOne of the key ideas guiding things along came from Totoki, who kept emphasizing the importance of people and Kando. That perspective gave rise to all kinds of ideas—like helping kids tap into new potential, taking better approaches to food, or imagining a world where older people can thrive. From there, we started exploring how the concepts we came up with might connect with Sony's business areas. All we needed to define at that stage were the direction for the vision message and a basic visualization of that worldview. We had no idea what the final output would look like.

MoriyaLooking back, a lot of the ideas that came up during those early brainstorming sessions ended up shaping the project’s overall direction. In Phase 1, we used those ideas to create a 50-or-so-page booklet called BLUEPRINTS 2035 and a video to go with it. That gave us a good foundation for dialoguing with experts and executives from Group companies.

Phase 1 incorporated the Sci-Fi prototyping method, which leverages the imaginative power of science fiction. It's an approach that the Creative Center has also employed in DESIGN VISION.^*1 How did you apply the technique in the Creative Entertainment Vision project?

AkagawaOne of the sparks for this project was Totoki's visit to a Sci-Fi prototyping exhibition we did in 2021,^*2 where he saw firsthand how designers can harness their imaginative capabilities to map out possible futures. For this project, we drew on that same method to write up detailed future scenarios and work backward to figure out how to make those futures possible. We also combined that backcasting technique with forecasting to ground the vision in reality, taking business and technological feasibility into account. We interviewed R&D engineers, for example, and gleaned insights from lectures by experts on social trends. We then used that input to help us create a timeline that factored in trends like physical-virtual integration, advances in AI, and shifts in younger people’s attitudes.

FujitaThat process led us to the core concept for Phase 1: “Infinite Realities.” It's about reimagining a world where physical and virtual experiences don't just stand side by side—they enrich each other, bringing new realities to life. One of the key points during the discussions was making sure physical experiences didn't take a back seat to the pursuit of virtual innovation. As we centered ourselves on bringing those two worlds together as fully and effectively as possible, we created three future stories to illustrate our ideas.

*1 Designers from the Sony Creative Center collaborated with science-fiction writers to create stories and design prototypes envisioning “Tokyo in 2050.” Exhibits of the results took place at Ginza Sony Park (Tokyo) in September 2021 and ROHM Theatre Kyoto in December 2021.

*2 (Reference) Designing the future with science-fiction writers: ONE DAY, 2050 / Sci-Fi Prototyping

Exploring communication design
across business areas

The team's year of work on Phase 1 generated output that you shared internally: a booklet and video shaped by a key concept and three stories. What was the goal of that Phase-1 output?

MoriyaWe wanted to establish a course for the entertainment business and get an idea of how we'd elevate physical experiences—a line of thought that became a conceptual core, which we drew on to deepen discussions. At the same time, we knew that no matter how powerful video is in conveying a future vision through imagery, it wouldn't be enough; to really communicate the whole of our research insights, the roadmap to that future, and the expert opinions and data behind it, we’d need another medium. That's why we packaged the video together with a booklet.

AkagawaFiguring out how to present what we'd been working on for over a year was a bit of a headache, I admit. In the end, we decided to frame it with a narrative and infographics, which made it easier to gather feedback from management and experts across different businesses. For the booklet, we also brought in specialists from the Sony Acceleration Platform, which supports new business creation and development, to help us check through and refine the content. But the real goal wasn't about figuring out answers and presenting them—it was about welcoming key stakeholders to imagine the future with us. Totoki also urged us to share the vision with external audiences to broaden the conversation.

FujitaThe booklet features analyses of market trends in industries like motion pictures, music, and anime, along with a chart mapping out a potential ecosystem for 2035. As a designer, I'd never had the chance to dig so deep into data with people from different business units. It was eye-opening—an incredible learning experience.

AkagawaOn top of the stories we developed, we also presented a broader picture of the business ecosystem that supported those ideas—proposals for things like the communities that creators and fans form, for example, and location-based entertainment (LBE) facilities that could leverage Sony’s intellectual property and give people a taste of what co-creation can be like. That gave our ideas a better depth and made them more convincing for top management.
Looking back, it was a really exhilarating process. We designers stepped out of the Creative Center and crossed traditional boundaries to collaborate with some of the most prominent people from across the group on a long-term business vision. But what really hit home for me is how positive and open the discussions were, no matter where the people came from or what positions they occupied. We got so many practical, real world–oriented questions about how to approach our vision from the business standpoint and other perspectives—and there is no doubt in my mind that those dialogues had a huge impact on the results.

July 24, 2024　Creative Center

Read Part 2 of “Designing 'where the Sony Group wants to be'”