PCIM 2026

Question: Please let me know, what is the background for the creation of the Regenerative Innovation Centre here in Düsseldorf, and what makes RIC unique within Toshiba’s global innovation environment?

Answer: The Regenerative Innovation Centre (RIC) was established to lead innovations that embody Toshiba’s vision of “Committed to people, Committed to the future.”

One of the motivations for its establishment was the absence of Toshiba’s innovation functions in EU, despite the region’s global importance in sustainability.

Traditionally, Toshiba’s R&D and overseas research centres have excelled in creating world-first technologies driven by technical seeds. However, they faced challenges in areas essential for social implementation, such as design thinking, collaborative business development with partners, and above all, strong connections with local business units of Toshiba’s regional business units.

Rather than generating technologies from scratch, RIC’s uniqueness lies in its approach: carefully observing societal needs and market trends, and bridging the gap between core technologies and social implementation by connecting engineers, business units, and designers. This enables RIC to directly drive social innovation.

Question: What are the advantages to being based in Europe when it comes to regenerative R&D?

Answer: Above all, European countries, especially Germany, place sustainability at the core of their actions, with strong emphasis on decarbonisation and the circular economy. This makes Europe an ideal environment for Toshiba to learn and take on new challenges as it grows into a truly global company, including both areas where social implementation is progressing well and areas where challenges remain.

Europe also tends to formalise corporate social responsibility for sustainability through regulations. For Toshiba to continue operating successfully in Europe and globally, it is essential to engage more deeply with local communities, gain a better understanding of the realities on the ground, and ensure timely feedback into our business and products.

In this regard, our European partners, including companies, think tanks, research institutes, and universities, share a common perspective with us, which enables smooth and effective communication.

Question: Looking back over the past two years, are there already some achievements or breakthroughs through the activity of RIC?

Answer: Even looking back over just the past two years, the political and economic landscape in Europe and globally has continued to shift, and what we need to consider has evolved day by day.

Since the launch of RIC, we have been working closely with Toshiba’s business units in areas such as SCiB batteries, hydrogen, and negative emissions. These efforts have led to direct contributions to business challenges and the strong advancement of Europe-originated project proposals.

At the same time, we have made significant progress toward our longer-term goal of regenerative innovation, identifying several promising new domains and concrete approaches to pursue them. For example, data centres are becoming increasingly important to Toshiba’s business. Rather than treating them as mere profit-generating infrastructure, we have defined a direction that enhances social acceptance and contributes to both society and Toshiba’s business, by systematically ensuring sustainable power supply, delivering secondary benefits to citizens, and supporting regional regeneration.

This is precisely the kind of domain where RIC can serve as a driving force for positively leveraging Toshiba’s comprehensive strengths. To support this, we have begun developing digital tools for dialogue and co-creation with all stakeholders.

Furthermore, in Europe, advanced efforts are underway in the field of water resources. Specifically, the effective use of wastewater as a resource and the optimisation of entire river basins, including power plants and wastewater treatment facilities, are directly linked to regeneration. As this area aligns well with Toshiba’s business, we are now designing projects with potential partners.

Question: How do you measure the effectiveness of an innovation centre like yours—especially when working on long-term, regenerative technologies?

Answer: While contributing to short-term value creation in collaboration with Toshiba’s business units is one of RIC’s key missions, our long-term value lies in shaping the direction of next-generation products and services through a regenerative back-casting approach. We aim to enhance their value while keeping the short-term business perspective in mind.

As mentioned in the previous answers, for areas such as energy solutions for data centres or water-related businesses, the short-term focus tends to be on selling as many existing components and solutions as possible. While that is certainly important, RIC takes a broader view, addressing industrial challenges from a regenerative perspective, breaking down the solutions that will be needed, and exploring enabling technologies held by European research institutions.

For example, we have begun working with Toshiba Devices & Storage Corporation (TDSC) to link these insights to future product planning for semiconductors that may be handled by Toshiba Electronics Europe GmbH (TEE). This marks the beginning of a strategic initiative to align long-term innovation with Toshiba’s business roadmap.

Question: The concept of “regeneration” is central to your mission. How do you define it?

Answer: As businesses and economic activities advance, our lives have become more convenient, but it’s undeniable that the negative impact on the global environment has also increased. We are deeply concerned that simply aiming for net-zero may not be enough, not only to restore a “good state,” but even to achieve net-zero itself. That’s why we define a more positive trajectory beyond net-zero as “regeneration,” and we aim toward that.

This concept applies not only to the environment, but also to various societal challenges that have intensified alongside the progression of capitalism. The “regeneration” we envision is not in opposition to capitalism, but rather seeks to coexist with it. Our perspective is to treat regeneration and capitalism as two complementary forces working together to improve both the planet and human society.

Question: What’s the goal for the Regenerative Innovation Centre- Are there any upcoming projects or focus areas you’re particularly excited about?

Answer: As mentioned in the previous answers, numerous projects and focus areas have emerged. For example, in the data centre domain, we have identified several opportunities that can contribute to the growth of Toshiba’s European business in the short term. We will continue to serve as a counterpart to Toshiba Japan labs and business units.

However, short-term contributions alone are not sufficient as a goal for an innovation centre. RIC aims to go beyond the boundaries of Toshiba’s energy, digital infrastructure, and component business domains to create future products, solutions, and services that contribute to regeneration.

We are currently preparing a number of exciting projects, such as regenerative data centres and the coupling of energy and water utilities in ways that support regeneration.

Question: In the Toshiba Clip article from 2024  there’s was a strong emphasis on co-creation and collaboration e.g. with the Wuppertal Institute and University of Aachen. Can you point out how this helped the acceleration of your work?

Answer: The collaboration with RWTH Aachen University has clearly served as a catalyst for establishing our new office in Aachen and attracting top talents. In recent discussions, we have seen growing potential for Prof. Monti and his strong network of expertise and technologies to fill key gaps in Toshiba’s power transmission and distribution business, one of the pillars of our growth, and help Toshiba take a leading role in shaping the future of digital energy grids.

With Prof. Ramesohl of the Wuppertal Institute, we have received valuable support in defining and quantifying our vision of “regeneration.” As a next step, he is advising us on industrial dataspace initiatives, an area where many Japanese companies struggle to formulate strategies. His guidance is helping us explore how to balance economic rationality with a regeneration-oriented perspective, a challenge that touches on Toshiba’s company-wide strategic direction.

Question: What’s the most ‘out-of-the-box’ idea your team has seriously considered?

Answer: It goes without saying that the most out-of-the-box activities and development themes are those where RIC engages directly with business units and dives deeply into each business domain. However, this approach is not easily transferable to other domains, and in fact, highlights a broader challenge for Toshiba as a conglomerate: What does “out-of-the-box” look like when viewed across business domains?

As an answer to this question, RIC is currently developing a digital framework to support co-creation with customers. One example is the Bristol team’s development of a support tool for co-creating a mobile robot solution using SCiB batteries for logistics warehouses. This initiative contributed to securing customer orders in Japanese market that exceeded the budget expectations.

RIC is now working to expand this approach to other areas where Toshiba’s comprehensive strengths can drive business growth, such as data centres, next-generation energy distribution, and customer-side energy solutions. The goal is to generate out-of-the-box synergies that transcend individual business domains.

Question: What advice would you give to young engineers or researchers who want to work in a field that blends sustainability, innovation, and global impact?

Answer: It is about consistently balancing two perspectives: contributing to short-term business outcomes and economic rationality, while never losing sight of the mid- to long-term direction that we believe companies and society should pursue. This is extremely difficult. When working in a department focused on one side, it is easy to lose sight of the other, and organizational design plays a significant role in this.

Therefore, I believe the most effective approach is to be part of a team or organization that maintains a balanced view of both. Within that, I personally recommend studying areas such as systems thinking, system dynamics, and operations research as part of your intellectual foundation. These disciplines help you objectively understand conflicting societal challenges, and I believe they will also enable you to leverage the emerging generative AI technologies from a more informed and strategic perspective.

Question: What do you hope your legacy will be- not just in terms of technology, but in how Toshiba approaches innovation for future generations?

Answer: The goal, which relates to several of my previous questions, is to embed within Toshiba an organization and people capable of continuously generating innovations that reconcile economic rationality (capitalism) with corporate social responsibility. For many years, Toshiba’s research labs have been ahead of societal needs, creating remarkable “seeds” of technology that have formed the pillars of several Toshiba businesses. However, this one-way innovation approach has undeniably faced challenges in terms of business success probability and alignment with the accelerating pace of global innovation.

What is needed now are organizations and individuals who can strike a balanced perspective, connecting the trajectory of current businesses with future societal needs, while combining Toshiba’s strengths with missing pieces from outside the company to present viable solutions. This cannot be achieved by engineers who are solely interested in technology. We need a place where people, while maintaining their core expertise, can personally commit to reconciling capitalism with societal regeneration. I believe that leading innovation through such a collective is the approach Toshiba should take.

Question: Finally, I am curious: What’s the most ‘regenerative’ thing you do outside of work.

Answer: To stay focused on my work in Regenerative Innovation, I take care of my mental and physical well-being in regenerated natural environments like Eifel National Park. If you have any recommendations for food produced through “regenerative farming” or other “regenerative” activities, I would love to hear them!

(Interview was conducted 11/2025)