What challenges should designers face now, as found at the GOOD DESIGN AWARDs.
FOCUSED ISSUES is a GOOD DESIGN AWARD initiative that depicts the future of design in society through the screening process.

2024 FOCUSED ISSUES
Considering “A Small Step, Design Leaps”
Design as “the formalization of tacit knowledge” in order to boost innovation ー Akie Iriyama and Aki Hayashi
2025.3.20
Aki Hayashi, a Focused Issues Researcher, made the proposal “Start by questioning identity'” as a 2024 proposal for future design. It was Akie Iriyama, a professor at Waseda Business School (Graduate School of Business and Finance) and a management scholar, that Hayashi asked to talk with her in order to deepen the proposal further. Due to space limitations, some episodes could not be included in the report. However, we are releasing the full dialogue.
We have been hearing for a long time the statement that “Japanese companies have become unable to create innovation,” but Hayashi sees signs of a breakthrough in the evolution of design in recent years. Together with Iriyama, who says that design is the ultimate “formalization of tacit knowledge,” she explores hints about how Japanese companies and business people can create innovation.
Have Japanese companies really become unable to create innovation?
Hayashi: I think we’ve been hearing for a long time that Japanese companies have become unable to create innovation. However, since being involved with the GOOD DESIGN AWARD, I’ve seen the power of design behind some examples which give hints of a breakthrough. For example, Canon, which received 12 GOOD DESIGN AWARDs as a group and two GOLD AWARDs with its Semiconductor Production Equipment in 2024, and Panasonic's LAMDASH PALM IN Shaver (hereinafter, “Lamdash”), which received a GOLD AWARD in 2023, are good examples.
Iriyama: I’ve got LAMDASH with me today!
Hayashi: Oh, really?!
Iriyama: I use it daily, and I feel that it’s really great. It was my best purchase in the past two years. I don't have time these days, so most of my trips are by taxi. If the driver is a man, I ask permission and then shave in the taxi. At times like this, LAMDASH is compact, easy to carry around, stylish, and has five blades so you can shave without problems. I've been using it regularly for two years, ever since I thought that it was a good item.
Hayashi: I heard that one of the designers working directly on LAMDASH was the initiator and turned it into a commercial product while convincing the company. The success of LAMDASH brought greater recognition of the power of design, and I think it also served as a catalyst for corporate change.
Iriyama: This is totally “innovation,” isn’t it? However, rather than there being a technical invention, the point was the redesign of the joint mechanism. Also, I personally like the fact that they bit the bullet and made the connector format USB Type-C. There’s nothing more wasteful than buying disposable batteries, so I think it’s also revolutionary in that respect.
Hayashi: I also heard that design plays an important role in the process of integrating companies purchased through mergers and acquisitions at Canon, a group I mentioned earlier. I feel that the role of design in Japanese companies' efforts to innovate and transform themselves is an important one.
Design is the ultimate “formalization of tacit knowledge”
Iriyama: I understand design as “the formalization of tacit knowledge.” This idea comes from the “SECI Model” put forward by Ikujiro Nonaka, a professor in Hitotsubashi University’s graduate school.
Hayashi: This is a model used as a basic theory of knowledge management in the broad sense, isn’t it? It’s a framework that converts tacit knowledge, such as the knowledge and experience possessed by individuals, into formal knowledge, which is then shared and managed by the entire organization and combined to create new knowledge.
Iriyama: That’s right. If the various senses in the human mind are represented as an iceberg, most of the visible parts are explicit knowledge. Below the waterline lie many unspoken and unformed parts: in other words, tacit knowledge lies dormant.
In that sense, I think of design as the ultimate formalization of tacit knowledge. No matter how much you may think inside your head “I wish there were something like this,” it remains just a feeling. So it’s design which embodies something that has never been done before.
However, many Japanese companies are struggling to formalize tacit knowledge. To begin with, they no longer know what they want to do. This is probably why design thinking, a method of identifying business problems from the user's point of view and coming up with solutions, attracted attention for a while.
Hayashi: Was LAMDASH, for example, a kind of tacit knowledge given a form?
Iriyama: I don't know how the designer actually came up with the proposal, but I think there was an initial idea along the lines of “Wouldn’t it be good not to have a handle? Isn't this fine as it is?” I think the words used to describe design always come out after tacit knowledge becomes formal knowledge.
Unexpected consumption behavior generated by a dedication to design
Iriyama: Speaking of design, I digress a little, but in fact, “Management Theories of the Global Standard” (Diamond Inc., 2019), which I published in 2019, was a book with a firm dedication to design. This book is over 800-page thick and served as a trigger for the boom of so-called “Donki-bon,” or books as thick and heavy as if they can be used as a blunt instrument.
Hayashi: Why did you decide to publish such a thick book?
Iriyama: It originally began as a series in the Harvard Business Review. At the planning stage, it was supposed to fit within about 20 chapters. However, as I studied the theories while writing, the number of items increased as I thought “I must add this; I must add that.” As a result, the series which became the draft of the book ended up being 44 articles, the longest in the history of the Harvard Business Review. Whether to publish in multiple volumes or in one volume was discussed at the preliminary stage of the publication process. But I didn’t want separate volumes. The reason was that even though the quality is unchanged, some people will buy volume 1 and not volume 2, won’t they? At any rate, I was determined to publish it as a single volume. At that time, I remember being told by a person at the printing company, “This is among the thickest books that mankind can make” (laughs).
Hayashi: In making the book thicker, were you particular about the design?
Iriyama: The text of the original Harvard series was written vertically, but that of the book is written horizontally. One of the aims was to make a book look like a textbook, but the main reason was simply because you can fit in more letters using horizontal text. Another thing that I’ve barely talked about until now is that the paper is actually a little thinner than normal.
We achieved this thickness thanks to such ingenious efforts. In a sense, it came out as a “book with a new design.” If you actually see this book in a bookstore, I think you’ll be surprised at just how thick it is.
Hayashi: People were really talking about it at the time, weren’t they?
Iriyama: Actually, something unexpected and interesting happened after I released it. It's too heavy to carry around, so some people bought an e-book copy of it as well as a physical one. Or they bought two copies, one for their home and one for the office. Those were interesting, but what was even more interesting was the emergence of people who bought one copy to keep, and another to cut up with scissors and read chapter by chapter. My dedication to that design created an unexpected trend of “owning multiple copies of the book.”
Hayashi: As a result of your determination to use that design, you ended up seeing unexpected ways of purchasing the book. Looking at the winners of this year's GOOD DESIGN AWARD, there were also some cases where following through on an idea because of the desire of “I want to do it” led to something that broke through the received wisdom in the industry or the company.
Iriyama: Design is design, but it may be close to art in that sense. Some people ask what the difference between design and art is in the first place. In my understanding, design is about finding and solving problems, while art is more about expressing intentions. If you stick purely to problem solving, you may never reach art.
Rather, the sudden feeling one day that “this is what I want to suggest” is more important. It was because I had a belief in myself that I was determined to stick to one volume rather than separate volumes, despite opposition.
Hayashi: It’s true that this might be closer to art than to design. The book turned out to be one that was unthinkable based on received wisdom, so a new way of consumption was born. I think it's amazing that 150,000 copies have been sold despite being so thick.
Design in the business-to-business domain, where innovation is expected
Hayashi: I have some GOOD DESIGN AWARD winning designs on which I would like you to make a few comments. For example, in 2023 Toyota's new Prius was a candidate for the GRAND PRIZE, and some of award-winning works were related to automobiles. However, in 2024, one of the GOOD DESIGN AWARD BEST 100 was “Geological Design,” a car-making process aimed at achieving a complete recycling of resources. They had apparently been working on it for about 10 years. I felt that these changing trends should be closely watched when predicting the future of the industry.
https://www.g-mark.org/en/gallery/winners/25806Iriyama: It's a great idea, isn’t it? In particular, the fact that they had been working on it for 10 years was wonderful, so I wish they could have won it 10 years ago... Recycling is now becoming the norm in the clothing world. I hope there will soon be designs that make cars entirely out of organic materials.
Hayashi: Incidentally, this year's GRAND AWARD went to the “RESILIENCE PLAYGROUND Project,” which developed “play equipment on which anyone can play regardless of disability,” cutting across the fields of medicine and play equipment. At first, it was a project started by young employees on a small budget.
Iriyama: Universal play equipment that allows able-bodied children to play together with disabled children is great, isn’t it! Personally, I would like them to make play equipment on which adults can also play to the full going forward. I think that the only play equipment with which adults have the opportunity to come in contact in parks at the moment is equipment which are used for health purposes, such as one from which elderly people can hang down. Parks are places which are open to a wide range of people, not only children but also adults. I think it would be good to have a world view in which adults, too, can play.
https://www.g-mark.org/en/gallery/winners/22683Hayashi: Or take the GOLD AWARD winning semiconductor manufacturing equipment “Adastra.” Canon Anelva, which won the award, was originally a subsidiary of NEC, but entered the Canon group through a merger and acquisition. From then on, it inherited Canon's DNA, including in terms of design. In fact, I've heard that the integration process started with creating the business card design. This is an example of design playing a major role in the semiconductor sector, which is expected to grow in Japan.
https://www.g-mark.org/en/gallery/winners/20950Iriyama: In the coming years, the age of the Internet of Things will accelerate further, and objects and the digital will merge. As a result, innovations will occur one after another in domains such as factories, distribution, and medical care, in which physical limitations have been difficult to overcome until now.
Hayashi: One of the 2024 GOOD DESIGN AWARD winners which gave a hint of this was the Swap Refrigerated Van Body refrigeration truck, in which the driver's cab and the cargo bed can be separated. Pre-cooling the cargo bed and loading and unloading frozen cargo can be done in advance in the warehouse, allowing drivers to focus their working hours on driving duties, thereby ameliorating long working hours and contributing to improved transportation efficiency.
Or take the GOLD AWARD winning Rapyuta ASRS automated storage and retrieval system. It is anchorless and can be assembled like blocks, making it possible to install automated storage and retrieval in existing warehouses without stopping operations.
https://www.g-mark.org/en/gallery/winners/24551 https://www.g-mark.org/en/gallery/winners/21817Iriyama: The labor shortage will become more serious in the B2B domain, including in distribution, so the help of AI and robots will be essential. For example, if you go to the distribution center of Logisteed (formerly Hitachi Transport System), you can see that the operations are already almost unmanned. Giant Roomba-like robots run across the floor, carrying things. There’s still plenty of room for digital transformation in the B2B domain, in comparison with B2C, and it’s sure to change greatly in the future.
Hayashi: Hearing what you said about design as a form of tacit knowledge, and about the further potential for design in B2B business, I feel that the key to creating innovation in the future will be to what extent business people are conscious of their daily work and mission as “design” and how far they can learn from excellent design. Thank you very much for talking with me today.
A report summarizing this year’s Focused Issues activities will be published in this journal soon. It highlights key discussions, including the recent expert roundtable, and brings together insights from six directors and researchers who examined a wide range of entries. The report also presents concrete actions as proposals. We hope you look forward to this deep dive into a year of exploration!
Akie Iriyama
Professor at Waseda University Business School(Graduate School of Business and Finance).
Specializing in business administration, he has published numerous papers in leading international academic journals on management. His books, The World’s Most Advanced Management Studies You Can’t Learn in Business School and World-Class Management Theories, have become bestsellers
Aki Hayashi
Editor, writer, director | President of Brand Journalism, Inc.
In 2022, Hayashi founded and became the president of Brand Journalism, Inc., a company that promotes journalistic public communication of companies and brands. At the same time, she works as a director of NewsPicks for Business, Inc. (content production) and as an executive officer and the senior chief editor at Alphadrive Co.,Ltd. She is a former chief editor of Forbes JAPAN Web and a former reporter of the Asahi Shimbun. A member of the Scheem-D Steering Committee of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. Graduated from the Faculty of Law, the University of Tokyo.
Ryo Hasegawa
Writer
Hasegawa assists with writing structure and articulation, supporting individuals, companies, and media in their communications, with a focus on technology, management, and business-related content. Notable editorial collaborations include The Future of Work in 10 Years (Takafumi Horie & Yoichi Ochiai), The Evolution of Japan (Yoichi Ochiai), THE TEAM (Koji Asano), and The Formula for Career Success (moto), among others. His background includes studying at the University of Tokyo (Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies), working at Recruit Holdings, becoming independent, spending three years playing poker in Africa, and continuing his career today.
Shunsuke Imai
Photographer
He was born in Minamiuonuma City, Niigata in 1993. He became independent after working for amana Inc.
Masaki Koike
Editor
Editor. He does planning and editing in multiple media, mainly in collaboration with researchers and creators.