Playful Ant 11 – Kunitake Saso（BIOTOPE co., ltd. CEO／Chief Strategic Designer）
This article’s playful ant is Kunitake Saso a business strategic designer. After working at the P&G marketing department in Japan, Mr. Saso went on to study design at the Institute of Design, Illinois Tech, and then joined SONY. Next, he launched BIOTOPE, a co-creative strategic business design firm. Many of you are probably familiar with his name as his activities have been exposed in various media along with keywords such as “DESIGN THINKING” and “VISION DRIVEN.”
Through his best-selling books, Mr. Saso introduces cutting-edge concepts to the Japanese business industry. After the COVID-19 disaster, Mr. Saso published a new book, “Living Jibun Jikan (living in one’s own time) – TRANSITION (Asama-sha)”. I asked him about the inspirations behind his new book and what playful hopes he has for the future.
Shifting from “productivity” to “meaningfulness” in the wake of migration
── You have written best-selling business books, but this summer you published a new book on “work and life” titled “Living the Jibun Jikan”. What inspired you to write this book?
Mr. Saso: Moving to Karuizawa with my family was a big deal. In April, 2021, when all schools were shut down due to the COVID-19 disaster, I and my wife began to think about the ideal environment to raise our child. In the process of examining the possibilities Karuizawa become our ideal location with it’s nice mix of culture and nature. I also learned my wife had a dream of designing the ideal house for us. So, I decided to take a bold step and commit to my wife’s dream of building our own house in Karuizawa.
As I confessed in my latest book “I used to be the Productivity Demon’ and always held work to be my highest priority. While I’m proud of many things that I’ve achieved, I was feeling as if I was always looking for what seemed to be missing. But since I moved to Karuizawa, I’ve become to appreciate my everyday life. And, looking back, I think building the house was a big start of my transition. As a house is the base of a person’s lifestyle. With this as the axis, I feel that I have re-established my own filter for looking at and perceiving things in everyday life.
Talking about my life in Karuizawa, I work at home in the mornings after dropping my children off at their schools. I installed a large window in the living room of my home, then wild birds have started to visit from time to time. I really enjoy watching them during work at home. I often have a homemade lunch with my wife at noon, and in the afternoon, I go to a local place with a nice bookstore for a change of mood. While working there, I always run into one of my friends and enjoy chatting. In the evening, I enjoy a good swim in the pool, then go home and enjoy cooking dinner and talking with my family. We often go to bed by 10pm.
We can live more richly when we have the mindset of enjoying “what we have now” without seeking the results of getting more or doing better. By immersing myself in my new life in Karuizawa, I realized that the simple things are the things that bring me satisfaction. I wanted to share the TRANSITION (change from within myself) with everyone, so I put the message “let’s enjoy this time now” into the book.
── I understand that you also ventured on a round-the-world journey by yourself this summer. Is that also related to “living in one’s own time”?
Mr. Saso: Yes, I have been traveling around the world for about a month from June to July, with only one backpack on my back. It was partly because I was curious about how Japan looked like from other countries after a long state of isolation due to COVID-19 disaster. But, honestly speaking, I feel there was a stronger reason in my mind. After returning to Japan from graduate school in the U.S., I started my own company, got married and had children. Everything was going well, but I felt that my own psychological hurdle to going abroad was getting higher. It was my desire to break through that barrier which made me venture into this journey.
── What did you gain from that journey, in a nutshell?
Mr. Saso: Going outside of Japan this time definitely enabled me to sense things that I would not notice if I had kept on staying inside Japan, and this has changed the way I look at Japan.
In this journey, I dared not to decide which hotels and routes to take in advance. Whereas I live a comfortable and routine oriented lifestyle in Japan; during my trip I kept moving around, deciding where I should go tomorrow on a day-by-day basis. To exaggerate the feeling a bit, it was like I was able to regain my wildness and instincts (laughs).
Also, during the journey, I kept posting information about my whereabouts such as “I’m in Paris” or “I’ve arrived in Quito, Ecuador” in real time on Instagram. And I had many opportunities to be approached by local Japanese people who happened to see my messages. By getting connected to those people, I realized how much I was helped by the fact that I am Japanese, and how much trust I was given by people because I am Japanese.
Chatting with Japanese people living abroad, I learned about the growing interest of people overseas in Japanese culture such as Japanese food. When I’m in Japan, I tend to be conscious of just the issues that Japanese society is facing. However, from an outsider’s point of view, I realized that Japan is still full of opportunities. I was reminded of that, too.
Journey is to keep stepping into an unknown world
── What type of experimental PLAY would like to try in the future?
Mr. Saso：Through my round-the-world adventure, I was able to rediscover that I really love to “journey”. Here, by journey, I mean not only the travel to see the unknown cities, but also the adventure to step into an unknown world. Though I had a smooth sailing career from the perspective of others at the company I joined as a new graduate, which was considered the leader of American-style marketing, I dared to leave and study abroad to jump into the world of “design”. Looking back, the reason was because I was motivated by my desire to “step into an unknown territory”.
Also, after returning from this journey, I somehow happened to meet people all of who have connections with Europe. Because of this connection, I am now interested in “how to enhance the value of Japanese culture in European countries”. I hope to contribute, even a small bit, by creating “a system that is not only a product”.
In my round-the-world journey, I met people I would not normally meet, including the ones I had never met before and I had not met in 10 years. Those encounters with various people seemed like just coincidences, but in fact, they are all things that were connected because “I went there myself”. That is why I want to continue to actively step into unknown places. Through the encounters I will make by actually visiting these places, I am sure that I will be able to see how the path will be developed. Fortunately, thanks to this journey, I now feel lighter than ever before that I can go abroad more easily and often for a short period of time, say two weeks. I look forward to serendipity as I take each small new step on my own.
Post-Interview Reflection
It was about 10 years ago when we first met through an introduction by a mutual acquaintance. I had just returned to Japan, and it was just before Mr. Saso published his first book on Design Thinking while working for a leading Japanese company after returning from graduate school in the U.S. He has since gone on to start his own business, and it is no exaggeration to say that he is now recognized as one of the leaders in the Japanese business world.
Though Mr. Saso appears to have had a smooth sailing career, he once muttered as we chatted over tea, “I feel like I’m having less and less fun”.
Everyone is an adventurer when starting something new. However, once the adventure of proposing and spreading a new concept to the world bears fruit, there are more things that must be protected. When we become preoccupied with protecting what we have accumulated, we can only take steps in the territory of certainty, and we gradually become unable to venture on the futile adventures that excite our hearts even though we cannot see what lies ahead. And before long, the joy of journey through life gets lost.
Mr. Saso seems headed for a new journey, lightly jumping out of “the productivity trap” and “success trap”. I am very much looking forward to seeing what encounters and changes will inspire him to bring another new concept into life.
Stay Playful.
『The Playful Ants that change the world』
In an ant society, you can easily identify the herd of “Worker Ants”—the textbook definition of ants, the ones who continuously carry the food. If you take a closer look, you may notice that there’s a different group of ants walking about playfully in their own world. These are “Playful Ants”—ants and thanks to their curiosity, they at times stumble across an unexpected feeding ground or detect sudden threats in advance allowing them to warn the colony of danger in advance.
In this interview series, I introduce interesting lifestyles and work styles of different “Playful Ants”, in order to help incubate them into this world.
Each human being is as small as an ant. However, if each ant pursues his or her own path purposefully and playfully, that path can connect to an opportunity to explore and create something new. That can turn into the power to change the world in its own way. I’ve come to believe so after spending many years on designing and leading practical innovation projects, and working with many global and Japanese corporations as a consultant.
Yasuhiro Karakawa(Playful Ants Incubator)
With a purpose of “incubating Playful Ants both in the corporations and the society” Yasu has been leading practical innovation projects with global corporations in more than 10 countries while also serving as a strategy advisor and a guest lecturer.