Insight Into the Business of Emerging Solutions

Invent. Innovate. Improve.

Kenja pursues the innovation of everything; our tools, people’s work efficiency, technology…

My father was an inventor of many things and had as many as 110 patents. Forty years ago, he created a TV watch which was in the Guinness World Records book for 10 years. I grew up with a mind-set for innovation and it’s a passion shared by Ted Katagi which led to us creating Kenja together in 2011. It’s been ten years since then and there are many things I’ve reaffirmed, learned new and discovered about the business of emerging solutions. In this article, I discuss some of the most crucial factors to be mindful of.

Creating Emerging Solutions

Emerging solutions is something that you either suddenly come up with through epiphanies or something you steadily analyze, plan, design and build – a difficult process but one that can be summed up simply.

First, you need to identify a problem you want to create a solution for. Next, you need to discover the root cause of the problem then move onto developing a solution. Once you have refined the solution, you need to write down the requirements. For example, is it a web tool or a mobile tool? How will it be used? What interface is needed? Everything needs to be written down then handed over to the development team who will take over and go through a process called Minimum Viable Product (MVP).

The initial stage – choosing what problem to solve and developing a solution – is key but it’s all about intuition. In addition, as a business, you also have to think about whether the solution would be profitable because development requires money. However, sometimes people have epiphanies and bypass most of the difficulties. My dad is one of them. He would see things in a dream, write everything down then apply for patents. Those kinds of people are special and I think our CEO Ted Katagi is one of them.

“As a profit company, emerging solutions should be meaningful in two ways: ethics & profitability.”

Issue of Innovation

The main issue with emerging solutions is that they are emerging. People don’t know to look for emerging solutions because it’s new and they can’t look for something they don’t know about. Kenja had this problem before when “collaboration tools” had not been popularized yet. In the past, everyone was just looking for chat tools but now they’re looking for collaboration tools so Kenja has been getting more traffic but not much because our CEO Ted has set his sights on something new. Always too new.

My dad had this problem. Years ago, when appliances were still wide, he invented flat speakers and applied for a patent. But it had no demand because there was no use for it yet. Today, we have flat TVs with flat speakers built into the back. Unfortunately, patents only last 20 years.

This is the difficulty with innovation. It’s too new. Sometimes, it’s even ahead of its time. Aside from that, people also get concerned because they don’t know what the emerging solution is and how it works. There’s no available data or experience to draw from either so it’s hard to sell and popularize.

Make the Transition Easier

Before the matter of sales and popularization however, is product awareness. People won’t look for something they don’t know exist and they don’t look for solutions to issues they aren’t thinking about. You need to spread awareness about your solutions so people know about them and/or start thinking about the issues that the solutions solve otherwise you’re just waiting for people to stumble onto them.

Traditionally, you introduce emerging solutions to the early adaptors first then work your way up to the market leader. But still, people will be conservative because it’s new. In Japan, people even go as far as hating new things. This is especially seen in the corporate world where they are so conservative that they almost never use anything new and stick to “tried and tested” products like the fax machine.

Japanese markets always wait for others to use the new product until it becomes mature. Or, they wait until large companies use the new product because that means a thorough audit has already been done so the smaller companies don’t need to waste money auditing products themselves. It’s very logical. But it is also why it’s very hard to penetrate the Japanese market and introduce new things in Japan.

Kenja goes around this problem by utilizing the flexibility and adaptability of our services. We can have our product be closer to X company’s current solution then show them a small additional feature as well as ROI so they can see what the benefits are in numbers. This way, we are able to tap into the familiarity of X company’s current solution on top of the benefits we offer which eases acceptance.

Brand familiarization along with product awareness is also a huge help as that would mean being able to leverage the familiarity of your brand rather than relating an emerging solution to existing solutions. Kenja does this by attending events such as the Blockchain Expo Tokyo 2022 so we may introduce ourselves as well as our products to businesses and build relationships with various people.

Importance of Delivery

Just as first impressions are crucial, the way emerging solutions are introduced is also crucial. One way is by encouraging people by showing them how emerging solutions improve efficiency. This is the core of Kenja’s business, we seek to improve the lives of people by improving work efficiency through our CMS blockchain-enabled platform, Kenja Rooms, and our digital transformation (DX) solutions.

For example, Due Diligence is a very good use case for us. When buying a company or a house, you need to investigate and research its many assets, liabilities, contracts and so on before purchasing. All of these can be done more easily by using Kenja Rooms which is a file repository and collaboration space with permission settings to enable only certain users access to files among many other features.

There are not many services which specialize in this and there’s only one popular company that works on this type of solution so the market is very good for us. It’s easier to get in and we can leverage our better features. So this is a case of looking into what’s existing and then doing it much, much better.

Another way to introduce emerging solutions is through marketing. For example, smartphones were not immediately adopted at first because people didn’t think they would need it since everyone had cell phones but Apple was aggressive in marketing iPhones which enticed people into trying. It was when they did that people finally realized the benefits thus it became the “must-have” item it is today.

The point is to get people to try, which is an extension of product awareness because if people don’t know a solution exist, they can’t be encouraged to try. Going back to smartphones, there were many people who thought of similar things to the iPhone and had patents for parts of it earlier than Apple. But while many people can create things, it’s those who market their products and services well who become successful.

In summary, the business of emerging solutions is very difficult. There are many factors that decide success from creation to adoption by the public and there are also many factors that can help. Kenja has been in the innovation business for the past 11 years and has a rich history but there is still a lot more we can do. In terms of marketing, I can see our next step to be reaching out to academic figures or famous people who have relevance to our service so we can share Kenja to an even wider audience.