Read Part 1 of “Designing 'where the Sony Group wants to be'”

We can do more:
How cross-business dialogue propelled
a chain reaction of ambition

Answering Sony Group President, COO and CFO Hiroki Totoki’s call to “design a bright, positive, exciting future,” people from all over the Sony Group's business domains worked together for over two years to draw up the Creative Entertainment Vision. Designers from the Creative Center, each with their own unique background, worked to imagine what Sony should look like 10 years into the future, brainstorming ideas and piecing together a solid, unified concept.

Part 1 looked at the project's background and the team's research, brainstorming, and concept-building work during Phase 1, which covered fiscal 2022. In Part 2, the discussion dives into fiscal 2023's Phase 2—a process that culminated in the vision's big reveal at the Corporate Strategy Meeting 2024—and how the vision sets the stage for the Sony of tomorrow.

How did the team engage with top management across the Sony Group, serve as a creative hub in fostering co-creation across business boundaries, and craft a story that brought the Creative Entertainment Vision to life? Through the words of three designers who worked on the project, learn more about what motivated them, what they took away from the project, and how they see the potential of design unfolding.

In Phase 1 during fiscal 2022, you focused on research, brainstorming ideas, and formulating concepts for “where Sony wants to be” 10 years into the future. Out of that process came a roughly 50-page booklet and an accompanying video. How did you leverage that output in Phase 2 during fiscal 2023?

MoriyaWe shared the video and booklet from Phase 1 with management and engineers from different areas and got a lot of valuable feedback. What really surprised me were all the comments saying things like "We could make this happen in less than 10 years," or "Let's go even bolder!" That kind of forward-thinking, can-do willingness to try out new ideas felt so Sony to me.

AkagawaThe Sony culture is all about pushing further—it's like it’s always saying, "We can be even more revolutionary." That pushed us to keep improving the vision. For us, doing that meant continually engaging in conversations with our focus on filling the world with emotion and getting closer to people. And Totoki put us in touch with such an incredible range of people, too. We dialogued with teams from Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) and Sony Music Entertainment (SME), for example, and animation-centric organizations like Aniplex and Crunchyroll, an animation streamer. On the gaming side, there was Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE), Epic Games (of Fortnite fame). We even had the chance to talk to people who work on investments for the Innovation Fund, specialists in cross-domain uses of intellectual property in games, music, and film, and so many others. We organized all the feedback we got through those conversations, presented it to Totoki and other leaders, and went back and forth on the details to zero in on the key points.

FujitaI still remember someone asking, "Who exactly do we mean by 'creators'?" That got us thinking hard about who the Sony Group wants to co-create with, how it can nurture talent, and how it can cultivate communities. Collaboration differs from field to field, too. In music, for example, individual artists are always teaming up with people in different genres. But in animation and gaming, it's not as easy to cross those borders; the technical and scale-related barriers are still pretty high. As we talked through those ideas against the backdrop of today's realities, we started to get a clearer picture of the “creators” we wanted to feature in our vision for the future: people who co-create with agility and versatility, seamlessly moving across the boundaries of video, animation, gaming, and whatever else.

AkagawaOnce that diverse mix of creators and the environments they work in came into sharper focus, the big picture really fell together. Along with Totoki and the project team, we established the key message to inform the whole vision: Create Infinite Realities. It's all about seamlessly connecting the multi-layered worlds at the point where the physical and the virtual overlap, delivering limitless Kando through the power of creativity and technology. To bring that vision to life, we came up with three foundational components. First was "Creativity Unleashed," which means transcending dimensions to unleash the creativity of creators around the world. We verbalized the second element as "Boundaries Transcended"—going beyond boundaries to connect diverse people and values and foster communities. The last component was "Narratives Everywhere," the idea of expanding exciting experiences rich in narrative beyond imagination and across the world.
Once we had the three pillars locked in, we worked to build concrete stories on that foundation.

How designers gave shape
to the co-creation stories

From there, you started working on developing the actual stories to showcase to the public at the Corporate Strategy Meeting 2024.

MoriyaFrom there, the focus shifted to sketching out the stories we’d use for the external launch—using those three points to design what the creators 10 years from now would be like. That involved storyboarding, a narrative-building technique. Taking advantage of the generative AI that's burst onto the scene, we drew up key scenes like a picture-book storyboard, turning abstract ideas into something visual.

FujitaWe wanted to show how an individual creator could break through the traditional walls of production, collaborate across fields, and grow their talents and communities. By framing it all as a first-person experience, we made the concept relatable to both creators and the people supporting them.

AkagawaThe process was a lot like storytelling-based prototyping, where designers imagine the future into a form of some kind. No matter how evidence-backed and accurate a chart or diagram is, it's hard to impact people emotionally with data alone. You need a story, and this project taught us just how powerful a good story can be.

MoriyaTotoki made sure we had a platform to share our storyboards with leaders from across Sony's businesses. It was a gathering—essentially a strategy summit—that brought the Sony Group's business leaders together to discuss the Sony Group's corporate strategy and medium- to long-term, business-crossing plans. We got a chance to show our storyboards there, and the process of creating things that'd convey our ideas to people and then gaining buy-in became a big driver for the final Creative Entertainment Vision we came up with. From my perspective, that was the biggest turning point of Phase 2.

Moving into the final stage and the project's end output, the Creative Center acted as the hub, coordinating across the Sony Group organization without the help of any outside agencies. What did you focus on in bringing the vision to completion?

AkagawaI think having developed the storyboards ourselves was a real confidence-booster for us moving forward, since the reaction to the output solidified our connections with teams across the entertainment businesses, like SPE, SME, and SIE. But packing everything into a short two-minute video—and making it resonate globally—was a huge challenge. We got together for so many discussions to iron out every element, from the smart glasses for the main character to the smart pens and gaming controllers that’d also make appearances. We were set on getting everything right, all the way down to the last detail.

FujitaWe even developed a profile, backstory, and design for the spacesuit-wearing character that the protagonists create in the video. We worked with production partners to refine the character’s look and movements, creating visuals that aligned with the narrative. Every step—from the scenario to the design—was us. It was unlike anything we’d ever done, really.

MoriyaJust those smartphone-esque devices in the video are a great example of how Sony designers immersed themselves in their work and talked things through with engineers to highlight the collaborative element at the heart of our vision: a single piece of IP expanding in multiple directions, like music, games, and motion pictures. One of the most ambitious parts of the project for us was getting directly involved in virtual production, which we used to shoot the video in a way that’d reflect the "future" dimension. It’s a method that fuses together the background imagery, actors, and design mockups during filming. Working closely with teams from SPE and Pixmondo, a Group company, we shot the video at a Los Angeles virtual production studio called Stage 7 on the Sony Pictures studio lot. It was our first time using the approach, and the learning curve was definitely steep.

Unlike post-composition workflows using chroma keying, virtual production—including the VFX portions—is completed almost entirely on set. That's why we had to not only create all our background CG before filming but also verify everything from actor movements to camera movements and lighting in advance. We got a lot of help from Studio BROS (a Sony PCL group company) and Modeling Bros, which collaborated on the production of the background CG to project onto the large LED screen. On top of the background production, they also provided a simulator that let us meticulously verify the movements of the CG on the LED screen, the actors, and the cameras, enabling us to conduct thorough checks right up until the shoot.

AkagawaThe process of bringing the whole worldview of the vision to life visually also gave us a chance to experience how it all came together on-site—and that's a rare opportunity. You don't often get the chance to find out firsthand if your story, world-building, and visuals all align with what you've envisioned. We got to collaborate with so many talented creators in that effort, too.

While all that was going on, we also developed three design prototypes that'd let people experience the vision for themselves. Focusing on translating the solutions from the video into real-world forms, we worked up proposals for a community platform for creator collaboration, a platform for hosting virtual music performances, and location-based entertainment (LBE) venues merging IP and technologies at the Sony Group's disposal. Our prototypes were on display at the Corporate Strategy Meeting, helping audiences engage with the vision in a richer, more impactful way.

Design imagines the future,
creating a vision capable of opening up new horizons

The vision represents two years of research, collaborative-platform building, and prototyping. What was the response to the vision's debut at the Corporate Strategy Meeting?

AkagawaAfter the presentation, Totoki shared some of the internal reactions with us. A vision—especially at the scale we were dealing with—obviously doesn't end with its unveiling. For our creation to spark further action, we needed to share the message with as broad of an audience as we could, including the Sony Group, stakeholders, and others.

MoriyaWe got solid feedback from people who were there at the meeting. In addition to how the vision laid out the shift toward entertainment, the attendees let us know that they liked how it conveyed a clear direction at a high level of quality. The message shaping the vision clearly spoke to people there, and the sense of anticipation that came out of that deeper understanding made it all worthwhile.

FujitaWe even showed the video to art school students—future creators themselves. Their responses were inspiring; one said that it was “moving to see a company like Sony share a vision for our generation,” and another said, “If creative experiences, built through discussion and collaboration, really come to life, it could change the world.”
I've also heard people from Sony saying that the vision helped orient the goals for their projects. What that means is that the Creative Entertainment Vision is laying a common foundation for branding teams and product developers to imagine the same future. That's a great outcome, I think.

This project seems like it wasn't just about the vision itself—it also served to unlock new potential for design. What did you take away from it from that kind of viewpoint?

FujitaFor me, working with leaders across so many different fields gave me a broader perspective. With Sony's Purpose—fill the world with emotion, through the power of creativity and technology—always in mind, I'm excited about how I can connect that aspiration to actionable, impactful designs.

MoriyaIf you look at it from the standpoint of career development, the project gave me opportunities that went far beyond what I ever imagined my work would involve. I can’t even count all the unbelievable experiences I had. I remember sitting down with Daigaku Kumano, who managed the project at the Creative Center, and the two of us saying the same kind of thing over and over again—that we never even dreamed that our careers would see us filming at a Hollywood studio. And it wasn’t just that we got that opportunity; it was all part of envisioning the future of the entire Sony Group. What made that possible for us, I think, was the trust and track record the Creative Center has built over the years.

AkagawaA senior manager told me the other day they were amazed at how the designers pushed the project forward through conversations with leaders from across the organization. But that wasn't something we achieved alone. With Totoki and other top management providing direction, the whole Group—from business planning to engineering—worked as one to enable us. The Creative Center was the hub for the Group's creativity, and it allowed us designers to get a stronger, fuller grasp of the bigger picture. Everything we'd done up to that point came together.
Looking ahead, it's exciting to think about how the Creative Entertainment Vision is going to inspire designers across Sony’s domains to keep collaborating and imagining new futures. It’s the next chapter, waiting to be written—a continuation of the new vision now in place.

July 24, 2024　Creative Center