Re-Inventing Pharma and Nutrition | Otsuka, Japan | Matthew Griffin | Innovation Keynote Speaker

Firstly, thank you to Janishia at Otsuka, Japan’s largest pharmaceutical and nutrition company with over 6,000 employees and 521 Billion JPY in revenues, for asking me to host a workshop with their group CEO’s and senior leadership team and present on the future of their, and of complimentary, industries.

During the keynote I discussed all manner of topics, ranging from the future of leadership in a disruptive world, all the way through to shining a spotlight on the future of their products, and providing them with tangible examples of how they could expand into new markets outside of their core business units.

Business and Future Realities, by futurist speaker Matthew Griffin

Focusing initially on the Metaverse, more because that was an area they were very interested in rather than because it was a natural place to start, I gave them an overview of the what, the why, and the how of the metaverse. We then dived into the opportunities it presented them and brands like theirs, especially with respect to their Pocari Sweat brand - Japan’s equivalent of Gatorade and which dominates its American counterpart with a market share of over 40%. Here we discussed what happens when you think about product development in terms of the digital, physical, and virtual attributes a product has or could have – something that in my opinion far too few organisations are thinking about.

I then dived into new manufacturing and R&D technologies, and explored what happens when new technologies and gadgets, such as wearables and 3D Printing, combine to help brands customise and personalise products, such as food, in new ways, with one example of this being to use biological and biometric data – or Quantified Self data - by companies such as Sushi Singularity to 3D print “artistic and novel” sushi whose nutritional profile exactly matches the needs of the person consuming it.

I even discussed what happens when shops become autonomous and mobile, and also threw the ultimate sin on the table – the suggestion that they gave their products away for free. But, as always, I also showed them how they could make even more money using this model by showing them a previously sci-fi like business model where the consumers getting those free products mine crypto for the company and give them the dividends, or the yields, in return.

As you can see, when it comes to the future, everything’s on the table – including 3D printed sushi.