In this modern age we are approaching a time of transformation, when people's values will undergo great change. At the root of this change are the diverse shifts we now see in global conditions. The world presents us with unpredictable challenges each day: major natural disasters like earthquakes and floods, global financial instability and environmental degradation that increases over time, to name a few.
We are left with a sense of unease—a feeling that we cannot see what lies ahead. But we are also presented with opportunity. Today we have the chance to develop new technologies making more efficient use of our limited natural resources, or to uncover new sources of energy.
We believe that in an era of unpredictable change, the mission of the Nissan Research Center is to create new values to contribute to the mobility society of the future. There are four key societal trends that we track in connection with this mission: the electrification of mobility, the aging of society, the formation of new information services and the urbanization of populations.
In our four key research domains corresponding to these trends, we seek to offer new values, considering things like what the automobile can do as a means of mobility, what we can do with our technologies and how we can contribute to society from today forward.
Nissan's research and development efforts build on the “orchard concept.” What kind of fruit will an orchard provide to enrich people's lives, and when will the fruit ripen? How can we best nurture the trees and ensure that they bear fruit? And how must we enrich the soil—in our case, the foundation for our technological development work? The orchard concept encompasses all these facets.
The Nissan Research Center serves as a “frontier farm” that prepares the way for the orchards of the future. Our mission, to create new values to contribute to the mobility society of the future, is nothing other than the discovery of new, fertile ground and the creation of new seeds and young plants that will one day lead to orchard harvests.
The Nissan Research Way is a fundamental philosophy underpinning our efforts. It rests on three pillars. The first is the ability to foresee future technological trends and shifts in society's values. We gain insight into the likely form of tomorrow's society from trends in technology and the evolution of the automobile. The second is the creation of networks connecting us to university, corporate, and other research organs around the globe, making our center a hub for open innovation where the world's wisdom can coalesce. And the third is maintenance of our own high level of technical expertise in strategic fields. We know that the key to offering new values lies in having the technologies required to make them reality.
To put the Nissan Research Way to work on an even higher level, the Nissan Research Center seeks multidisciplinary specialists who can carry out truly groundbreaking research. These researchers have thorough mastery in their areas of expertise, but that is not all: they also have wide-ranging knowledge and technical skills, a business sense that lets them connect the dots from their research to the discovery of commercial value, the ability to forge ties with talented people around the world and many other skills that let them meet the needs of their jobs.
To attract the very best of these multidisciplinary specialists, we have created the SIR, or senior innovation researcher, system. The automobile society is not insulated from the ongoing age of unpredictable change. We want to work with researchers from around the globe who can unearth as much as possible of the potential that remains hidden in our world today, turning it into opportunities for our future.
A future of excitement for people and the vehicles they drive.
The Nissan Research Center is already striving to create it.