Delivering social value with human-centric innovation

Tsuneo Kawatsuma was appointed Executive Advisor of Fujitsu in April 2015.

Fujitsu CTO and CIO Tsuneo Kawatsuma explores a core principle of the Fujitsu Technology and Service Vision — the coupling of business innovation and social innovation.

Business innovation is unquestionably the source of commercial success — and information technology is playing an increasingly active role in driving that. But, as Fujitsu’s CTO and CIO Tsuneo Kawatsuma highlights, there is another side of innovation that deserves equal focus — social innovation.

With its vision for a Fujitsu Technology and Service Vision, the Japanese technology company is advocating that ICT innovation is used to address some of the major challenges facing society. In other words, ensuring that technology serves society and individual needs, as well as business.

“Fujitsu has social innovation — or as the company terms it, Human Centric Innovation — as a corporate mission,” says Kawatsuma. “The reasons why we advocate Human Centric Innovation are very simple,” he says, citing just some of the daunting macro-trends that mankind needs to confront.

“Around 1990, the world’s population stood at around 5 billion; but by 2025 it will be close to 8 or 9 billion,” he says. If nothing is done, that will result in “widespread shortages globally — of water, food and other vital resources. It will also mean cities will be heavily congested.”
The social enterprise

Therefore, he argues, it should be the raison d'etre of every corporation to address such difficult issues. “As well as governments collecting taxes and redistributing wealth to society, corporations need to give back to society and make that part of their primary purpose. So we use the term ‘Human Centric’ because the goal of an enterprise is ultimately social.”

Fujitsu has several major initiatives under way to fulfill that vision. It is actively pursuing Human Centric Innovation goals to address chronic traffic congestion, to enhance agricultural production, to optimize water management, to develop next-generation healthcare solutions and to improve education delivery globally.”

Behind that is a concept that aims to realize business and social value by creating ICT solutions and services that bring together the dimensions of people, information and infrastructure. That involves empowering people by creating knowledge from information (an area where big data will play a central role); ubiquitous connectivity (with the Internet of Things a major factor in connecting everyone and everything); and the optimization of the supporting business and social infrastructure.

•Read about the Fujitsu Technology and Service Vision