The transformations that AI is bringing will augment the abilities both of customers and of companies. By understanding customers and engaging more closely with them as individuals, AI will be able to enrich people’s lives and provide deeper value. On the business side, AI will be used to supplement employees’ abilities and take operations and organizations to the next level. It’s precisely this mutual growth of customers and companies that could very well become the driving force paving the way to a new society and economy. Nomura Research Institute (NRI) defines this value shift as the “depth economy^※1”, marking a transition from growth that tracks volume to the creation of value that produces a greater depth of quality. The ongoing evolution of AI will be the impetus that pushes digital technology from being simply a means of achieving greater efficiency to an entity that transforms the very way business is done. Perhaps it’s this that we should refer to as the challenge that takes us beyond conventional DX.
And in this period of transformation, the intellectual assets which companies need to possess will also change. The ability to link the layers of “individuals”, “operations and systems”, and “organizations and companies” with AI at the center of it all will be a new kind of intellectual asset.
The first layer involves AI and individuals. AI can expand people’s expertise and creativity through close engagement, becoming a foundation for creating new value in human resources.
Next comes operations and systems. Processes and designs that are driven by AI will be structured to be able to adapt to changes as well as to support decisions and actions taken by personnel and AI together.
Finally, there is the layer of organizations and companies. A framework in which AI can circulate on-site knowledge and data, and thereby enable an entire organization to keep on learning and evolving, will be the wellspring of that organization’s competitive capabilities.
Yet even after you have created these intellectual assets, your work is not yet done. Once an individual’s knowledge and intelligence have been expanded, it has to be incorporated into your operations and systems, and then sublimated as part of your organization or company’s abilities. Being able to continually run this cycle in keeping with AI’s evolution is itself perhaps a new kind of intellectual asset, namely the dynamic capacity to perpetually self-improve. AI will continue to evolve going forward, constantly rewriting market and industry structures. In a period of such drastic transformation, the ability to continue changing and adapting to change will be the foundation for a company’s sustainable growth.

Furthermore, in an effort to truly stand alongside our clients in their ventures, we at NRI are also engaging in our own self-improvement. In order to respond to the rapid development of AI technology, we’re aspiring to transform ourselves in the context of all three of those layers, namely “individuals”, “operations and systems”, and “organizations and companies”. Among them, it’s on the level of “organizations and companies” that we’re striving to expand bidirectionally, that is, both vertically and horizontally.
Horizontal expansion means partnering with external organizations to achieve a fusion of intelligence. At NRI, we’re pursuing an AI co-creation model that will pool together a wide variety of knowledge and technical skill, by partnering with cloud vendors, AI startups, universities, and other research institutions. Through these types of collaborations, NRI is building an intellectual support system tailored to meet the challenges our clients face.
Vertical expansion is the kind that adds greater depth to our own internal transformations. NRI is committed to enriching its ConSolutions^※2 – a comprehensive process for providing everything from future insights to strategy planning, implementation, and operation – as well as to reforming operational processes, organizational structures, and more. The experience we gain from refining our own processes through these transformations can have a positive impact on our clients’ own transformations, becoming the foundation for making our proposals, implementations, and realizations even more reliable.

The changes being ushered in by AI are not a threat, but rather are an opportunity to augment both society and companies. AI can unlock people’s creativity, and even grants us the power not only to tackle the kinds of social issues that previously could not be resolved, but also to create new kinds of value. By embracing the spirit behind our corporate philosophy “Dream up the future”, NRI is seeking to shape the future that AI is paving the way towards, together with our clients and society. Rather than fearing change, we want to continue to transform ourselves, and thereby remain a reliable, trusted partner.