Toyota Woven City to help inventors create more “for others”
Movement usually involves going from point A to point B, which may also refer to advancing other people’s well-being. Toyota Woven City will help inventors and residents achieve the latter.
The Japanese automaker announced that it is building an urban space to encourage creative and talented individuals to produce more useful innovations.
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Residents will have the opportunity to test their creations in their daily lives and provide feedback. As a result, both groups will help produce products and services to serve those outside their community.
How will the Toyota Woven City function?
The official website says the Woven City will become “a place for inventors to embrace these challenges as opportunities to ‘fail fast’ and kaizen (improve).”
Toyota will build the urban space in Susano City, Shizuoka Prefecture, and complete construction in 2024. The location is a former manufacturing site that previously accommodated the Toyota Motor East Japan, Higashi-Fuji plant.
The community will have its soft launch in 2025. Employees will become its initial residents, and then the Toyota Woven City will expand its population to 360 people.
It will have two parts, the Woven Test Course and the Woven Inventor Garage. The first resembles a real-life city where innovators let residents test their inventions.
They may launch their new products and services anywhere, such as streets, offices, and plazas. As mentioned, residents will comment on these creations to help inventors improve them.
The Woven Inventor Garage will support inventors with cutting-edge hardware and software. Toyota will facilitate “co-creation activities, such as research that incorporates diverse data and real-time feedback from potential users.”
Daisuke Toyoda, head of Toyota Woven City management, says the futuristic project will provide mobility for people’s well-being. It will help develop products and services that will allow people to move their lives forward.
He also explained that this project follows founder Sakichi Toyoda’s Mission, Vision, and Purpose. Specifically, the Woven City will fulfill his Vision of Creating Mobility for All:
In a diverse and uncertain world, Toyota strives to raise the quality and availability of mobility. We wish
To create new possibilities for all humankind
And support a sustainable relationship
With our planet
