Study of Future Values

The world is rapidly changing at a bewildering pace and lifestyle is required to change to keep up with it. Eric Hoffer, a social philosopher, said, “The only way to predict the future is to have power to shape the future”. As part of efforts to enrich the future lives of consumers, Kao is striving to understand future values from a research perspective.

In a study termed “elpis” (meaning ‘hope’ in Greek), changes in existing products and services currently surrounding the lives of customers on a global level are being examined in order to estimate and create value required in the future.
Specifically, various new signs existing globally are grouped by use of the KJ method for systematizing trends in a hierarchal manner. Furthermore, by introducing the viewpoints of sociology and system thinking, the value structure of a trend can be clearly specified to discuss and elucidate the generating mechanism. From those findings, trends can be analyzed and interpreted by combining with five-sense information, and utilized for creation of products and services that target value transmission.

Using this approach, even though great transformation of the value axis such as sustainability and ethical consumerism has taken place, Kao researchers were able to understand signs indicating the globalization trend in 2011.