Means and ends cannot fully grasp this world.

During the cold season, I pickle Chinese cabbage at home, but this year I also tried pickling takana greens I happened to get my hands on. I made a long-fermented pickle, chopped it finely, stir-fried it with chili peppers and pork in sesame oil, and seasoned it with just a little soy sauce and fish sauce. Well, well, the aroma is quite different from store-bought stuff. Simply put, "stinky is tasty."

Actually, "Stinky is Delicious." That's the title fermentation scholar Takeo Koizumi gave to one of his books. Isn't it a rather brilliant "concept"? When trying to develop "delicious foods," common sense tells us to focus on sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami. We tend to base our approach on these five scientific elements (the so-called "five tastes") that the brain recognizes via taste buds and nerves. But that only yields predictable answers, making it hard to break through the status quo. Now, what if we shine the spotlight of "stinky is tasty" on this? Kusaya, natto, blue cheese, goat, cilantro. A world of "deliciousness" expands beyond what mere tongue sensations can explain.

But enough digression.

DENTSU SOKEN INC. (Director: Yoshito Maruoka) launched this January with a new mission: "To contribute to building a better society by providing a safe space for discussion in the fields of communication and marketing."

To solve modern societal problems with no objective right answers, stakeholders must gather to understand the situation, share challenges, and exhaustively debate solutions. However, such spaces are currently lacking.

Therefore, DENTSU SOKEN INC. has appointed 15 members, including internal staff and external experts, as Fellows. By creating a space for them to engage in free and open exchange of ideas, the institute aims to contribute to solving the various problems facing society.

You might not realize it just by reading this press release, but we are actually attempting a rather bold challenge.

Traditionally, think tanks—independent entities from government—are groups of minds that formulate and propose "policy" through research. It's common practice to demand that affiliated researchers adhere to "Publish or Perish," requiring them to produce a certain number of high-quality papers. DENTSU SOKEN INC., established in 1987, has also operated largely based on this principle for many years. However, the new DENTSU SOKEN INC. will impose no such publication quotas whatsoever.

Director Maruoka states:

"If writing papers becomes an end in itself, rather than a means to solve societal problems, it loses meaning. What we must tackle now are problems with no objective, single correct answer. Therefore, what's needed is debate where diverse values clash, yielding tangible shared knowledge. Isn't the experience itself—participating and encountering varied perspectives—what matters? We want to provide a 'safe space for debate' for that purpose."

As I wrote in my previous column, I had always thought of Mr. Maruoka, famous for works like 'New Advertising Psychology,' as an expert in objective, logical, Western-style "correct thinking" who loved KPIs. However, listening to Mr. Maruoka this time, what I found was a philosophy that resonates with "Zen."

The fundamental problem of life must not be something that separates subject and object. Questions arise intellectually, but answers must be experiential.

Excerpt from 'Zen' by D.T. Suzuki (Chikuma Bunko)

Traditional think tanks have tended to break down complex situations into small fragments like "goals and means," analyzing them meticulously to arrive at objective, correct answers.

In contrast, this entirely new Eastern-style think tank operates on the premise that "there is no such thing as an objective correct answer," not even denying the subjectivity each fellow holds. For the time being, they reportedly don't even compile a unified view as DENTSU SOKEN INC., leaving the publication of opinions to the individual responsibility of each member.

I'm quietly looking forward to seeing how such a bold initiative will contribute to solving societal challenges in the future.

Please, help yourself!