Haegwan Kim : At first could you tell me about your definition of success?
Kohei Nishiyama : That's the term that I don't think often, and I don't think I put my energy or talent to achieve success. But I think success is something others put on you, rather than you take it. It's a credit that someone else gives it to you.
HK : Interesting. The biggest credit people put on you is, I believe, cuusoo.com. I was amazed its idea and execution you guys made. Would you tell me a little bit more about the story when you founded the company?
KN: It was 14 years ago and back then we were one of the first player who was making the social manufacturing platform. So we started long before Facebook or Twitter were present. At the beginning, we actually asked users to form a community of common interests, and they aggregated the binding power before manufactures create products.
HK: So "cuusoo" was made on our imagination and idea?
KN: No, it was started from potential market but it's actually visualizing the potential market by identifying how many users are wiling to pay how much on the hypothetical products.
HK : And how many the hypothetical products came into the real so far?
KN : About 100 products are out of market.
HK: Wow, that's pretty cool. Japanese people are famous for their craftsmanship - called "Takumi". Did you think this feature helps cuusoo.com to evolve dramatically?
KN: I didn't grow up in Japan, so it was certainly not myself who has the character you have defined as a "typical Japanese". That said, up until now, most of user community formed on the platform are Japanese living in Japan and their backgrounds are as you say mostly engineering, and their esthetics are pretty much higher than average. They appreciate well-designed and thoughtful products, so I think it is natural the "craftsmen" have got involved and appreciated our social manufacturing products which was built long ago SNS were present in the United States.
HK : I reckon that you guys focus on "user innovation". I thought it's an unique idea and interesting. Could you tell me a bit about its concept and how to make user innovation?
KN: User innovations is coined by MIT professor whose name is Eric Von Hippel, from Sloan School of Management. His definition of user innovation is that it is an action taking by users who tend to lead other users who tend to invent or innovate things which are not supplied by suppliers. So user become the originator or innovator in a lieu of supplier.
HK : How user innovation happens on cuusoo.com?
KN : We're not trying to achieve innovation. We're just aggregating them. So user innovation exists everywhere. And I think it's a failure to identify how to make innovation rather than where innovation is happening. So user innovation happens everyday, every second. And it's not how to enable a person to innovate; those who do not innovate don't innovate and those who innovate innovate everywhere. And these innovators exist everywhere - so it's all about identifying where innovation happening and who make innovation.
That's why we've been seen as the very valuable entity by Lego or Muji, because we have identified 170,000 innovators online.
HK : These days people talk about eco-friendly products because of the natural disasters happening on the planet. If theres' your engagements on this field, please tell me about that.
KN : Our business model which is called design to order is already eco-friendly in a way because we don't produce if there isn't demand. We only produce if there's accesses of demand against minimal requirements of suppliers, which means that if break even point for manufacturer is ten and if there's five demands we don't produce, and if that's eleven we produce.
In this way we avoid producing which are not in demand, and if you look at the world suppliers actually do produce things regardless making sure that there's enough demand for their products. So proliferating what we do actually reduces the production of products which are not in demand and thus we say ourself eco-friendly.
HK : Do you think innovation comes first or demands come first?
KN : It happens either way - vice versa. As I said, we're not creating demands nor innovation - we're connecting dots, that's it. We just aggregating innovation because there's demands already. Innovators put innovation on the web, user react for that, and we visualize potential market.
HK : Can we say that connecting dots itself "is" innovation?
KN: No, however technology that enables to connect is innovation because it is a patented technology, in the light of algorithm or procedures of user interactions. We've failed so many times to connect users and replaced the old attempts by the new one because it simply performs better, and we finally overcame the difficulty to connect innovators online - I think we can say this is innovation.
HK: You're one of the members of World Economic Forum and acting as the global leader for a long time. Would you tell me how did you achieve and grow improve leadership?
KN: Just like the definition of success, I don't aim to be the leader. But after the 3.11, there was only myself who's available to do the job. I mean, if someone else was doing, I was totally happy to be lead. It just happened to me because no one else in my community was doing and I thought it is very important and my responsibility, mission and mandate to fix the problem.
HK: Did other people put the tag of "leader" on you, like success?
KN: They asked you to be a leader - you sometimes declined it but if there's no one doing it then you have to do it.
HK: Then would you say that so-called "successful people" or "leaders" are made by others rather than themselves being so?
KN: I don't deny the existence of natural-born leaders who tend to lead everything. Actually there are. And that's their temper, that's their nature and that's their character. What I am saying here is that I don't like to simply define what is leadership or how to achieve it. There's many many ways to be leader and including coincidences - I believe anyone can be a leader in their own ways, circumstances and situations that ask you to be the leader.
HK: As a final question I'd like to ask your advice on how to achieve success, but having a conversation, it seems difficult to ask?
KN: No, it's fine. My advice is don't aim for success, it will just follow.
Kohei Nishiyama is the Founder and CEO of Elephant Design.
