An innovation hub for continuous R&D breakthroughs and an open laboratory that will accelerate social implementation of creative technologies

Kawasaki, Japan – Toshiba Corporation today held the official opening ceremony for Innovation Palette, a new state-of-the-art R&D facility in Komukai Complex, a core Toshiba manufacturing operation in Kawasaki, southwest of Tokyo. Toshiba has invested approximately 34 billion yen in the new facility, which was completed in November 2023 and opened for operations in January. It is the home for Toshiba’s corporate R&D functions and the semiconductor business and R&D divisions of Toshiba Devices & Storage Corporation.

Toshiba established its Central Research Laboratory, the predecessor of today’s corporate Research & Development Center, in 1961. It quickly became the home to many world- and Japan-first breakthroughs, including the Japanese word processor and NAND flash memory. Over the years, their contributions have brought great convenience into people’s lives and helped to solve social issues. Now, looking at the world around us and the future we face, Toshiba Group aims to advance the realization of a carbon neutrality and circular economy, build infrastructure that can be enjoyed by all, and create a connected data society able to take on unprecedented global issues. Realizing these goals can only be achieved through the development of innovative technologies and their social implementation, and by drawing on both in-house and outside wisdom and capabilities. The Group is currently building a structure to achieve this, including the opening of the Regenerative Innovation Centre, a new technology center in Germany, in September last year.

The name Innovation Palette expresses the desire for the new facility to be a place where researchers, staff, customers, partners, and visitors can mix and blend their diverse personalities creatively, envision the future together, and promote innovation toward solving global-scale issues. The new building will accelerate innovation by offering three distinct approaches that encourage research and collaboration: activity-based working (ABW), co-creation spaces, and a live experimental site.

Grounded in its management philosophy, “Committed to People, Committed to the Future.”, Toshiba Group aims to create technologies and value through dialogue within the Group and also with its customers, partners, and society, and to contribute to solving social issues with its diverse and specialized human resources.

Features of the new building

1. Activity-Based Working (ABW) that germinates and nurtures seeds for growth and co-creation

ABW eliminates department walls and fixed seating, encouraging people to choose where they work, according to the way they work. It offers spaces for different activities, including a Focus Zone for individual work that requires a high level of concentration, a Co-Work Area for both individual work and interactions, an Idea Generating Space to encourage open discussions, and a Book Cafe that aims to promote casual interactions as people take breaks. This open environment allows researchers and engineers from different fields of expertise to interact with and spark ideas off each other on a daily basis, and promotes co-creation.

2. Banpan (万般) Square and Shizen (至善) Hall, co-creation spaces named after the two founders

Banpan Square and Shizen Hall are collaboration spaces for co-creation with customers and for exhibitions open to visitors. Their names come from remarks by Toshiba’s two founders: Hisashige Tanaka’s comment, “We welcome orders for inventions of all types of machinery” and Ichisuke Fujioka’s maxim, “Shizen”. The spaces will host workshops, hackathons, seminars, and other events, as a laboratory open to customers.

3. Live experimental site – Accelerate social implementation and commercialization of technologies through advanced and evolving demonstrations that maximize use of the new building.

Toshiba will use Innovation Palette to showcase services and advanced demonstrations of the facilities and the Group’s latest technologies. The entire building, including office areas, is a live experimental site, where data collected from facilities, including from sensors and cameras installed in the building, will be used to construct and utilize an operational digital twin (*1) that precisely recognizes space, people, energy, etc., and support appropriate environmental optimization and control. The project aims to create value through energy-saving demonstrations that provide optimized, comfortable control of air conditioning and lighting by evaluating human flows, etc., it will also support demonstrations of the use of robots and video AI to realize safety and security, and virtual power plant (VPP) demonstrations that realize advanced use of storage batteries. Through the software-defined (*2) operation of various facilities, including elevators, and AI learning from data collected in demonstrations, Toshiba will continue to refine services and accelerate the commercialization of new technologies.

*1: Technology that uses sensing technology and AI to reproduce events occurring in the real world virtually in real time, simulating the past, present, and future of a site while the site is in operation.

*2: The management of hardware defined by software, that allows for hardware functions and services to be redefined and updated over time.

Outline of Innovation Palette