EN
Special Feature
Business Co-creation Program
OPEN HUB for Smart World Opens Up
A Sustainable Future
In October 2021, NTT Communications launched OPEN HUB for Smart World, a business co-creation program to accelerate efforts for realizing a Smart World. This feature looks at our initiatives for co-creating new business concepts with customers and business partners and implementing them in society, using the “catalyst”, “asset”, and “space” provided by OPEN HUB, and thereby taking the initiative to address the diverse issues facing society.
Testing Ground for Concepts and Social Implementation
Under its Re-connect X business vision, based on co-creation with its customers and partners, NTT Communications is working to address social issues through fixed-mobile convergence services and ICT solutions. Living in a period of rapid change limits what any one company can do on its own to address increasingly complex challenges.
We created OPEN HUB for Smart World (OPEN HUB) as a testing ground for generating and implementing new concepts in society to accelerate co-creation and integrate diverse cultures and ideas. Players, who set up new concepts on the stage of OPEN HUB and turn them into businesses, consist of customers and partners as well as over 400 catalysts (as of December 2022). Catalysts are internal and external experts in their respective fields who work together with companies to create and implement new businesses in society by combining their technologies and knowledge. Four main mechanisms drive OPEN HUB. OPEN HUB Base is a community where players who want to co-create businesses gather and disseminate the latest co-creation results and ideas through OPEN HUB Journal. OPEN HUB Park is a workplace equipped with state-of-the-art technology on the 29th floor of our head office, and it operates as the central activity location of OPEN HUB, which is also linked to the various innovation sites of the NTT Group. Business projects born here are developed in accordance with the unique co-creation program OPEN HUB Play, toward ultimately implementing them in society.
We have already launched multiple projects at OPEN HUB and implemented several solutions in society. We are also continuing our efforts to increase the number of catalysts. Co-creation continues to accelerate, bridging the boundaries between companies, both real and virtual.
Flow of Co-creation in OPEN HUB for Smart World
Starting with social issues, a wide variety of players co-create with each other to create new business concepts and implement them in society.
Facilitating the Handing Down of Plant Operation Skills Using AI
The AI Plant Operation Support Solution, which combines NTT Communications’ AI technology with the plant control expertise of Yokogawa Solution Services Corporation, is an ongoing project for addressing the passing on of skills, a recent issue at chemical plant sites. This groundbreaking solution is the fruition of company-company and human-AI co-creation and a means that allows for skilled operators to demonstrate their expertise in the management of complex manual operations that cannot be handled by existing automatic control technology in terms of its application to AI models.
It also aligns with and shares the purpose of OPEN HUB’s co-creation program, which aims to discover new potential for future co-creation.
The 35th Nikkei New Office Award
In August 2022, OPEN HUB for Smart World won the New Office Promotion Award (Creative Office Award) at the 35th Nikkei New Office Awards organized by the Nikkei and the New Office Promotion Association (NOPA).
In recent years, the importance of the office as a location for creating new value has increased due to structural changes such as advancing ICT and diversifying working styles. OPEN HUB Park, the activity site for OPEN HUB for Smart World, was highly commended for being equipped with cutting-edge technology that transcends the real and virtual, as well as for its design as a novel workplace for real/remote/virtual collaboration with partner companies.
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Representative Director
of OPEN HUB
Seigo Tomatsu -
Connecting Thoughts to Become a Hub for Creating Value
OPEN HUB for Smart World was launched with the goal of becoming an “open hub” where volunteers from within and outside the Company could come together as NTT Communications attempted to resolve social issues by providing ICT solutions. These days, while almost every company is claiming to resolve social issues through their business, not much remains for any single company to address on its own. Now is the time to collaborate beyond the boundaries separating individual companies. We have strongly promoted remote work since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic to distant places and realize diverse working styles. From the perspective of creativity for resolving social issues, however, I feel it has partly tended to separate individuals. The idea for OPEN HUB, which straddles the real and virtual worlds, was born out of a sense of mission: to resolve this contradiction, we, who are in charge of the communications infrastructure, should provide a place that serves as a hub where people can bring their thoughts together.
We see OPEN HUB as a place for deliberately and strategically created chaos, like a stage play with an unknown ending. The unique players, mainly catalysts, find inspiration in the chaos of the BASE community and strive to create new value by resonating and co-creating on the PARK stage. The JOURNAL can be compared to a billboard illustrating the process of co-creation. The scenario remains forever unfinished, and the ending of the story depends upon the performances of the actors. The chaos in OPEN HUB is a stage set for sparking fascinating results from the dynamic interactions. I envisioned a chain of chemical reactions that would lead to the next inspiration. Moreover, I hope that encounters between people through OPEN HUB will promote personal growth and generate a virtuous circle leading to NTT Communications’ growth as a company and enhancing its dissemination capability.