SHIFTBRAIN Inc. (Headquarters: Minato City, Tokyo, Representative Director: Takuma Kato), a creative agency with a focus on the digital domain, and FOURDIGIT Inc., a consulting and digital design company in the same field, will jointly launch a project for the development of “iDID,” a community platform that connects creators around the world. Accordingly, SHIFTBRAIN and FOURDIGIT are pleased to announce that they have entered into a capital and business alliance agreement.

At the heart of iDID is a registration-based community platform for creators. By aggregating information on all sorts of projects throughout the world and the creators involved in them, we celebrate active creators, connect them with each other, and promote the increase of products of higher quality in the world. This new system will include a portfolio management function that allows users to see what projects they have done and who they did them with, a network function that visualizes who has correlative relationships with whom, and a community function that allows creators to connect with one another. This project is being promoted as an adopted project of the Monozukuri Subsidy and is scheduled for release in the first half of 2022.

 

The goal of iDID is to create a place where creators can connect with each other and share information in order to expand the value of creators around the world. We are planning various programs to create a world where we can make more meaningful and creative works.

You cannot know a person only by their company name or title. This is especially true in the digital design and creative world that we have been involved in for many years. For creators, their identity is about what they have created and what kind of work they have done.

Creators devote their time and passion not only to the quality of their output, but also to the meaning and significance of their work. In addition to these creators, there are many other people involved in the process, but there are not many opportunities for their teams and their roles to be made known. On the other hand, we have witnessed situations where the quality of a project can change dramatically with the help of one person. The way we think about employment and the way we work is beginning to change dramatically. There is an ever-increasing awareness of the expectation of individual strength and the importance of team relationships rather than the name of one’s company or title.

 

Under such circumstances, we decided that we must change the current situation in which the most important information—what kind of work was done by what kind of team—is difficult to see. iDID provides a place for creators around the world to connect with each other through their achievements, and promotes the increase of products of higher quality in the world.

 

https://idid.team/

SHIFTBRAIN Inc. and FOURDIGIT Inc. have entered into a capital and business alliance agreement.

At the same time, Takuma Kato, CEO of SHIFTBRAIN, will become a special advisor to FOURDIGIT, and Ryo Taguchi, CEO of FOURDIGIT, will become an external director of SHIFTBRAIN to promote the project through mutual cross management.

Both companies were founded in the early 2000s and have racked up a number of accomplishments in the digital design industry to date. SHIFTBRAIN, with its strength in high creativity, and FOURDIGIT, with its consulting and digital design practices, will work together to strengthen the execution of total design services associated with the customer experience in the digital domain.

Ten years ago, I was talking with Mr. Taguchi about the future of this industry at a café in Shibuya, and I vividly remember being surprised that we had the same vision in mind. We have tried many times since then to make that vision a reality, but as both of our companies celebrated their 20th anniversaries, we felt more strongly about the importance of increasing the value of creators, which led to this partnership and the launch of this project. We are determined to create a bright future where young and talented creators can demonstrate their true potential and play active roles in the industry.

We are greatly looking forward to working with SHIFTBRAIN in the form of this capital and business alliance. I feel that, not only in Japan but around the world, the greatness possessed by designers, creators, and people involved in the creation of products, is not yet reflected in market value. We hope that you will look forward to what this project has in store, as we have been working together in the digital design industry for more than 20 years and have firsthand experience with the changing times.