2024.03.22
Panasonic Group People
Creating a Relaxing Time and Space with
Panasonic Smart Home: Shuichi Kuroda
Series:
- Home & Personal Solution
Unlocking the Kind of Tough 
to Stand Up Even When You Fall Down!
New Businesses Pioneer
Shuichi Kuroda
Business Design Department
Panasonic Entertainment & Communication Co., Ltd.
Joined the company in 1997. He was involved in developing integrated circuits for wireless communication devices such as mobile phones for about 11 years. In 2008, he switched to television product design, where he stayed for another 11 years or so. Since 2019, he has been in charge of new businesses. With his experience in numerous new projects, he continues to take on the challenge of creating new businesses. He’s second to no one in terms of toughness.
Taking up the challenge of innovating entertainment
by creating new businesses
I am working on new business creation at Panasonic Entertainment & Communication Co., Ltd. (PEAC).
This came about from a sense of crisis that the existing businesses at PEAC, including televisions, audio, and telephones, would likely not lead to growth of the company on their own. I applied for the Business Creation Program, an internal competition launched in 2021. My goal was not only to enhance our product appeal but also to create products and services that would enrich our customers’ lives by exchanging new ideas, ultimately contributing to the creation of a valuable new future.
After being hired for the program's first phase, I envisioned more powerful entertainment with virtual experiences. One of those was watching pro wrestling. It’s one of my favorite things to do. I’ve even thought I’d like to enter the ring one time and experience it firsthand. Because of that, I wanted to see if we could provide a style of watching it wearing a VR headset to further enhance the sense of realism and immersion. If we could do that, people would be able to enter the ring in virtual space and see up-close how high that dropkick by popular pro wrestler Kazuchika Okada as he flies through the air and truly feel its intensity. I was confident we could thrill many customers by starting a business based on pro wrestling and expanding our reach to other sports in the future, and that gave me great satisfaction. The short-lived program did not come to fruition, but the experience became the driving force for my next new challenge.
Pursuing a relaxing
smart home experience
Around the time of that program, I participated in the product development of NICOBO*, a robot that makes you smile. We ran into some difficulties because no one on the team had experience in robot development, but the experience of seeing home appliances as living creatures made us aware of the small comforts in our lives.
＊It’s a weak robot that turns the conventional image of robots as being useful to humans on its head. Click here for details
NICOBO and the Business Creation Program were designed to create new businesses through trial and error. Using that experience as a springboard, I am now working on commercializing a new smart home for home appliances. It’s one failure after another, but I am turning my personal growth into a driving force by taking on challenges without giving up. I fall down, but I get back up...just like a pro wrestler does. The PEAC slogan is “Test the Limits”. It embodies the company’s way of thinking, which is that if you take on something new and difficult, failure will always be involved. Furthermore, failure is by no means something to be embarrassed about. Instead, giving up or not taking up the challenge in the first place is what should be embarrassing. This gives me the encouragement I need to keep going.
Existing smart home products bring convenience. In addition to this, I would like to provide relaxation to the entire home by leveraging the Panasonic Group’s technologies and strengths in the area of daily life while co-creating with other companies. My goal is to create a relaxing time and space unique to Panasonic that you won’t find with a conventional smart home.
I was in charge of hardware design for NICOBO. The heat from the CPU circulates throughout the robot's whole body so that it feels warm, like when you hold a dog or cat.
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