Making dreams come true by enabling human connections in the digital age

As a child, I was always thinking about how humans work and what makes them tick.
Here’s why: I often went with my father to the steel mill where he worked.
I watched huge objects being lifted by electromagnets and welded.

I could see that these objects were being carried along on rails, but the machines themselves were operated by men. I asked myself, how do people move?
I was fascinated by it.
Like I said, I've been excited about complex chain reactions since I was young.

That interest is still with me today.
When deciding on a graduate school major, I entered the Intelligence Science and Technology Laboratory. I really wanted to study what stimulates people's emotions when they see something, and how those emotions evolve.

I subsequently discovered that the laboratory specialized in stereoscopic vision.
To be honest, it wasn’t the academic field I was looking for, but it had many interesting aspects, and I was soon able to engage with it.

My entry into Fujitsu was triggered by the fact that a person from the research institute happened to visit my laboratory. I was impressed by how much the researcher seemed to be enjoying his research.

I went on a tour of Fujitsu and decided to join the company, because of the good atmosphere and the good fit with my own field of research.

When I joined Fujitsu, cell phones were just starting to develop. I was initially assigned to a department working on new technology to improve the voice quality of WiFi, alongside the development of power strips with power sensors.

Looking back now, I realize that I was just working on the themes I was given. Inside, I was agonizing over how I could create something ground-breaking and important for the world. I needed to find something that only I could do that the world really needed.

And I eventually identified what that “something” was - creating a web service that creates connections between people. I was in my seventh year with the company, and all the time was thinking about how I could combine my interest in human behavior with technology.

I started to explore lots of different avenues, but there were just too many requirements to be practical. I struggled to find the answer for two long years.
That is when I started the hackathon.
This program was established as an opportunity for cross-industry discussions on creating new businesses.

120 people in the company took part, and we made a lot of different things by just working with our hands. In essence, we were making things up as we went along, which really paid off. After getting nowhere on my own for two years, I was now successfully collaborating with my colleagues to establish a "web service that creates connections between people" and bring it to a point where it started to take form.

As we progressed, an important point struck me, that is also highly relevant to my current research. I realized that I could not sublimate the power of 120 highly motivated people. Even with teamwork, we had only limited time available to focus on how to improve performance and there were simply too many tasks for one person subsequently to grasp the movements and thoughts of all those people.

This was the moment when I really began to think that we needed a different approach – namely a platform where people can connect with each other and where each can signal what they want to get involved with.

That platform is Buddyup!*1, which I am currently focusing on.

Buddyup! is a web platform that aims to connect employees who share the same passion, enabling them to move the organization forward by harnessing the power of all employees.

Our mission is to enable organizational reform, corporate reform, and the creation of new businesses by expanding a positive circle of empathy, uniting people with a common goal and purpose – “I want to do it!”

“I want to do it!" and empathy are true human traits. When we define these through knowledge and consideration, we can transfer our true human spirit in to each line of code, and our feelings will be part of the system we build.
We believe that Buddyup! will be a new business platform based on true humanity.

When I am working, I like to consider the happiness of those around me because I want to be happy myself.

There is nothing more rewarding than seeing people making friends and creating new things through the support structure we have created. When I see people around me happy and excited by what they are achieving, it truly gives me a sense of purpose and defines my existence.

In the future, I want everyone in the world to use Buddyup!
I want as many people as possible to be able to say, "My dream came true because of Buddyup!
That’s what inspires me!