On March 17, 2025, Tim Brown and Masanobu Iwabuchi gave a special lecture on “The Impact of Design on the World” at the Shizenkan Campus in Nihonbashi. The lecture featured a lively discussion on the challenges facing Japanese society and the potential of design thinking.

At the beginning of the event, Tim Brown took the stage and defined design as “the act of shaping the world to meet our needs.” He emphasized that design is not merely about aesthetic beauty, but rather a human-centered creative problem-solving process rooted in empathy and experimentation.

At the core of design thinking lies a balance between three elements: desirability, feasibility, and viability, which represent understanding people's needs, leveraging technology, and building sustainable business models respectively.

The lecture also introduced examples of design-driven strategies that have brought about major changes in industries and society, such as “D Ford,” “PillPack online pharmacy service,” and “Innova Schools in Peru.”

These examples demonstrate that design thinking has the power to transform not only product development but also systems, services, and the entire customer experience. He also pointed out that Japan's long-term perspective, social stability, and stakeholder-oriented corporate culture are well suited to an “ecosystem-based management model” and that the introduction of design thinking can lead to sustainable and significant innovation.

In the latter half, Masanobu Iwabuchi gave a lecture on the theme of “How Japanese companies should leverage design and humanity to build long-term global competitiveness.” He emphasized that creativity and stakeholder capitalism are essential to overcoming the complex social issues facing Japan, such as an aging population, labor shortages, and changes in the way people work due to AI. He stated that by promoting an ecosystem-based management model, companies can create long-term value and bring about transformation across society as a whole.