Future Tech & Global Impact: Motoo Nishihara on How Firms can Gain a Technological Edge

Yeah, I like to highlight the three topics. One is our original natural language model, which we produced a year and a half ago. It's a size that is very compact and probably it was with 1/13 of the other competitor LLM. And because it is due to the reduced size, it is very low power, it consumes less power. And also the response is very quick. And after that, performance is very good. We focus on the Japanese language, and the Japanese conversation performance is very good at the time. And the second one is NEC is good at facial recognition by visuals and video recognition kind of thing. So, we integrate those kind of visual AI technology with our LLM. As then we can come up with many new solutions. And we have already deployed that kind of solution in the public sector. And that's the second topic. And third one is optical fiber sensing. It's a sensing technology. NEC is good at communication networking. And we are also one of the three major vendors to deploy the submarine cable. And we recently noticed that kind of fibers could be used for even the sensing of the vibration. So, you can detect that any movement or something in the fiber, and also the sound, and so many things can be collected from the fiber sensor. So those three technologies are very surprising and also impressive for me.

So NEC started the concept of the R&D ecosystem six, I think seven years ago. So this concept is the expansion of the notion of the open innovation, but it's going further more. So for example, we deploy, we provide our own technology to the outside, so that people can utilize our technology for their purpose. And through this kind of thing, we can find a new type of the market that internally NEC can find. So that is exploring the new market based on the technology. And then the other R&D ecosystem is more like we can utilize other technology outside NEC and we can explore the new type of the business. For example, we start the new business of AI for drug discovery and health care. These are our solutions outside of NEC's original business, but through discussion of the partner with the outside, we can explore those kind of thing and then we integrate our technology with other outside company technology. So that's kind of the deliverable of the R&D ecosystem. Basically, R&D ecosystem is preparing a new good environment for NEC business for the NEC incumbent business and it is a new innovation new business. That's all.

Um Yeah, we have seven laboratories all over the world. And as each laboratory have each feature and role. NEC of America, NEC of Europe, and the Japanese laboratory are focusing on the core technology. And the other laboratory are focusing on the more like solution research based on the core technology. That's description of the role. And in total the technology areas, I think the AI and security and network is a key part for NEC because we have a lot of system integration and new solution or services or businesses based on those technologies. And so I just want to highlight that the most of them is AI. As I said in the first question, NEC wants the new generation of AI services and I feel AI has a tremendous capability for the future. So, actually, half of the total researchers are focusing on AI technology right now.

Okay. So, you develop the advantage since we can incorporate the outside investment to our research. So, which means that we can raise up the funding for the sound research. And through that kind of increase of the funding, maybe we can accelerate the commercialization of the technology. That's the good thing. And also, I want to point out that through acquiring the technology from outside, NEC can explore the new market beyond the current businesses. And like AI drug and drug discovery, I mean drug search and also the health care kind of business. It is also agriculture business. It is a typical example of what I said. And this is a very new business area for NEC. And in terms of disadvantage, there are a couple of things. One is since we incorporate investment from outside for R&D and for our target, probably we have this limited governance for that company for that area. So we need a very friendly and good relationship with the partner that is very essential for that kind of thing. And another disadvantage is so far, I don't have noticed other type of disadvantage.

Okay, um So, as the CTO, I have a responsibility to make that huge technology asset for the NEC of the future business unit. So I make a some kind of portfolio for all the technology for the future business units. And so that maybe budget should be limited based on that kind of business plan. So the managing new technology resources for the business unit is very important. That one thing. And the other thing is new incubation thing. Like health care or drugs, AI drug. And maybe the generative AI and application. R&D sector should explore the new market. So that is a challenge for us. And especially in terms of generative AI, in this April we make a new organization named Generative AI Center. Which is including the other research and also the commercial development and also the business incubation. Since the progress of technology is so fast, we need think about how to integrate R&D activity and the commercial results quickly. And usually there are some kind of pipeline from our research development business units, but it takes time. So we have to combine those kind of things at one step. Yeah, that's current role for me.

Okay, um So, there are so many ways. One thing is they think about the future based on their technology. And on the contrary, BSI doesn't care about what kind of... the BSI people think about how to utilize the technology for what kind of policy. The policy is very important. This scope is different, but we have to line up the different direction to one. So that's the important thing. So all the activity which I'm doing in NEC right now is how to connect those lines. And in order to achieve that kind of alignment, we need a couple of schemes in terms of budget, resource allocation, and also sharing the technology vision, sharing the business vision at the same time. So those kind of human relationship, human understanding activity is very important inside the NEC group.

Okay, um I'm originally an engineer over networking project and system integration. And after that, I was assigned to different business division. And the mission is making new project for new market. It's more of the business incubation activity. I did for maybe 10 years. So after that, I join the research laboratories. And I make research management all over the world. So I have two perspectives. One is a technology point of view. And the other is more like a business point of view and a market point of view. So that kind of vertical perspective which I have could be a very good fit to what I'm doing right now. And that's all.

So, there are many projects in the world and I want to point out one huge project. It's digital identification solution for India. In India, I think there are so many newborn babies and some village and rural area don't have that many details registration scheme of the newborn babies. So we use more like identification technology for maybe a iris or a fingerprint. And for the newborn baby through the fingerprint or iris, you can identify the person beyond maybe 10 or billion people. So through this one, Indian government launched a new type of the national digital ID system, which is called I think Aadhaar or something. And it is very good for India health care and governance for the people. So that is one thing. We are using the biometric technology for that purpose. And the other option is maybe carbon neutral kind of thing. As an ICT company, we are focusing on that technology of computing, networking, AI, or software. But in order to achieve carbon neutral, monitoring and also optimization of the system is very important. So we can contribute in this aspect in the carbon neutral. And there are so many projects all over the world in the carbon neutral area.

Typical day, yeah. I wake up early in the morning and I go to my office and I will check my email and there are a lot of meetings. Including discussion with overseas laboratory, overseas customers. And also I have, since I am CTO, I have a lot of relationship with business sector and the huge customers. So I have to adapt to them many types of customer and discuss and also think about the new solution with customer. And also I have a lot of mini trips to overseas including NEC subsidiaries and also NEC customers all over the world. So it's very busy but also very exciting and good for my health and youngness of life.

Fortunately, NEC has had consecutive growth for the three years. And the sales and profit is increasing year by year. And the stock price is also doubled since one year ago. So looking at the future, I think the AI technology and also the new type of computing technology like quantum and also the new space of networking like 5G or 6G and satellite communication. And NEC are good at those areas. I think each area has a very astonishing breakthrough right now, as you know. So in the five years, 10 years, I think we have a tremendous opportunity for the future. Maybe society and the economics and the industry may drastically change. And I think I hope NEC can contribute to transforming society and economics through technology solutions.

Okay. So honestly speaking, making CTO job is very interesting. And sometimes fun. I like it because you can touch the best part of knowledge, best part of talent. And also you can touch the most important part of society, social problem or something. So I think until the day of my life, I want to touch those kind of thing. Maybe through industry, maybe through other part. Yeah. That's my wish. I'm Motoo Nishihara. I'm NEC CTO. I'm a corporate executive vice president. I'm in charge of the corporate R&D of NEC and also in charge of intellectual property management and also the new business incubation of NEC and the health care business. Thank you.