“Prototype City”(Kadokawa Press, 2020)

Kota Takaguchi(PH),Masakazu Takasu,Sho Sawada,Junichi Fujioka,Asei Ito,Hiroo Yamagata

It is a great honour for us to receive the Ohira memorial award . With such a seemingly disorganized book, taking on China, innovation, economic development, urban development, we would like to think that it is our overarching vision toward the future that earned us this honour. Thinking Together with a focus on prototype/experimentation based action The book “Prototype City” was written by a group of authors from different backgrounds: entrepreneurs, software/hardware engineers, researchers in innovation and China. It was born as part of Nico-Tech Shenzhen Community, which has been active since 2014. Our community’s approach is for each person to get their hands dirty, dive in, share each other’s experience, and structuring them through collective learning. We believe that new things that have never existed in society before can only be deciphered and learnt through joint thinking based on such prototype/experimentation based activities. Our main focus in the book, the city of Shenzhen and various innovations are themselves formed and developed through hands-on experimentation rather than mere theorizing. In this sense, the book is a product of the resonance between us authors and the subject. We are not just observers and visitors in the process. Our activities have resulted in several joint projects between entrepreneurs and engineers in Shenzhen. The book is simply an extension of those. Working together to move forward The world needs more innovation. Innovation requires people from different disciplines, across disciplines and borders, working together and using what they have created as a springboard to move forward. Slogans in Shenzhen, such as “reform and opening up”, “mass establishment and innovation” and “Internet Plus” are the expressions of those actions. This award is, in a sense, a confirmation that our activities had been in the right direction.For the future, we will continue to prototype/experimentation together with more and more people in various fields.