Research opens up the future. And so this future first exists in the imaginations of researchers. Sony Computer Science Laboratories（Sony CSL）ʼ s support of researchers with extraordinary imaginations is what makes it a place that is helping to create a future beyond most of our wildest dreams.

We declare that we conduct research for the future of humanity. Humankind has astonishing potential and great diversity. Bringing out peopleʼs maximum creativity, intellectual power, and physical capabilities, and then using technology to go even further, is how we will continue to unlock humanityʼs potential. People using technology to extend their abilities could be thought of as the next stage of our evolution, with the potential to make significant and rapid leaps forward.

Humanity has this great potential, but it is also confronting exceedingly difficult problems related to the environment, poverty, aging, food, health, medicine and more. These problems are complicated as well as diverse—we are going up against an extremely harsh reality. In order to solve these problems, I believe we will need entirely new ideas that go beyond borders, and exceptionally effective ways of putting these ideas into practice.

On the occasion of our 20th anniversary, we at Sony CSL proposed moving from an approach to science based on closed systems to an approach based on open systems. We called it Open Systems Science. Open systems are systems made up of complex, interacting elements, with boundaries that cannot be clearly defined; global society and the environment are two textbook examples. When we at Sony CSL come up with a creative idea, we are not boxed into limited knowledge networks. Moreover, a humanity that has extended its abilities with technology is itself an open system, connected to both natural and social structures.

With its focus on complexity, openness, and uniqueness, open systems research could also be described as an attempt to tackle the challenge of engineering extremely important but hitherto unreproducible phenomena. This sort of research requires a combination of empirical science, scientia, and art in its original sense of ars, skilled craftsmanship, redefined in the modern context.

In order to solve the problems that naturally arise when attempting to create such a system, we must integrate knowledge from a wide range of domains, and at the same time go beyond academic research and actually head into the field to put our ideas into practice-in some cases, we must continue our research whilst engaging ourselves in this system reform.

This line of thought led us to the Sony CSL motto: “Act beyond borders.” We feel it is our duty to solve problems, open up new possibilities, and offer something to the world by transcending borders between nations, between scientific fields, and between science and business. And crucial to this is the imagination and drive of our individual researchers. In a sense, you could say that each of our researchers is battling the very limits of his or her imagination. People have asked us if these wild ideas of ours will ever come true. Can we imagine the things that will happen, and the things that will be needing to be achieved, in as much concrete detail as we can? Do we have the ability to actually make those things happen? Our picture of the future determines the actions we take today.

Sony CSL supports the process of making these wild imaginings a reality. The research done at Sony CSL has created new scholarly fields, made major scientific contributions, and so on. In that sense, it has affected the world. But there are many things (we are working on) that will require concrete action and development within our societies if they are going to truly impact the world. Some of these will enter the world via Sony Group businesses or with companies beyond Sony Group, others will be created through cooperation between public utilities and government entities both domestic and international, others still will be spearheaded by Sony CSL researchers themselves creating new companies. Our researchers have many different methods at their disposal, and they can choose the one that best suits their desires and the nature of their project.

Sony CSL is a framework to make the wildest ideas come true, for the future of humanity.