■ Sony Group Quarterly Meeting

At the Sony Group Quarterly Meeting held on August 6th, I spoke on the theme of "Capturing Opportunities" as a vital element to the evolution of the Sony Group.

Live streaming of Quarterly Meeting on Teams

To capture new opportunities in the midst of a VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity) era, we must be even more alert and responsive in the way that we operate our businesses. To that end, the knowledge and insight of our diverse array of talent across the Sony Group companies will be essential.

In the spirit of our Corporate Direction of "getting closer to people", we decided to hold the Quarterly Meeting as a live stream event to get closer to each of you who are the driving force behind our businesses, even while working from home.

In the survey we conducted after the event, many of you shared comments identifying with the messages conveyed in the meeting, such as "the risk of not challenging", and "systematically reducing non-critical work." We also received positive feedback regarding the Space Entertainment Business.

This time, I asked Rob Stringer and Jon Platt of Sony Music Group to join me from our Group management team, and I was very pleased to see the positive response to their presentations. We received comments expressing your enthusiasm for the opportunity to gain more insight into the music business, reaffirm the importance of diversity, and learn about new initiatives around enhancement in royalty distribution and talent discovery.

■ DE Appointment Ceremony and "Sensing"

The Appointment Ceremony for fiscal 2020's Corporate Distinguished Engineers (DE) was also held online, on July 31st in advance of the Quarterly Meeting.

Under the leadership of Katsumoto-san, starting this year, we have expanded the scope of the Distinguished Engineer program beyond the electronics business in Japan, making candidates from all global Sony Group businesses eligible.

The 41 DEs appointed from our sites around the world participated in year's ceremony.

Appointment Ceremony for Corporate Distinguished Engineers for FY2020 via Teams

During the ceremony, I expressed my expectations for the DE appointees, and spoke of the growing importance of "Sensing" as an area of technology, and how it follows "Processing" and "Network" as a key technological trend.

Regarding this point, I received feedback from the DE appointees that in addition to the importance of expanding the range of applications for sensing technology, it will be vital to design not only the sensing technology itself, but also explore ways to utilize the sensing data acquired at the latter stages of the sequence from "input/detection" to "processing" and "output/expression." They also emphasized the need to develop our own strategy based on an understanding of the overall value chains including services with the end customer in mind.

As I mentioned at the Quarterly Meeting, I believe that among our wealth of technologies, "Sensing," which is closely aligned with our corporate direction of "getting closer to people," will be a keyword in laying a pathway towards Sony's future.

■ Summer Reading

Finally, during my summer vacation in August, I read a book called "Spotify Untold^*."

This is a non-fiction account of the rise of Spotify, from when it launched its service in 2008, through to becoming the world's largest music streaming company. It is written by two technology reporters based in Stockholm, Sweden (where Spotify's headquarters are located), drawing on their own independent research.

With 299 million users and 138 million subscribers as of June 30, 2020, Spotify has become one of the leading technology companies from Sweden, following Skype, since purchased by Microsoft, and Mojang, the developer of Minecraft. Like H&M and Ikea, it is a Swedish global brand that has remained an independent corporation.

As I underlined in my speech at the Quarterly Meeting in August 2019, Spotify is a company that has captured an opportunity in the area of music distribution through its streaming technology and subscription based business model. It also effectively utilized a free-tier advertisement based model and playlists to drive its growth.

Spotify is an important business partner for Sony. At the same time, I believe we can learn from the way Spotify was able to capture opportunities using technology, business models and services.

* Translation of the original Swedish title "Spotify inifrån." This book has not been translated into English.

As always, I look forward to receiving your feedback.