Research and Development How the Value-Creation Lab Supports I-ne technology
A new organization that opens up a new frontier: asset-lite R&D
Beauty is the child of art and science
Our marketing prowess has always been central in our history of business growth.
Central to our marketing is innovation of meaning.
We listen to consumers, identify their aesthetic values, and incorporate their values into a product that will be meaningful to them.
Beauty is not just visual.
It is the pleasant texture of your skin.
It is the soothing feel of running your fingers through your hair.
It is a little sensation that makes you like yourself a little more.
All these things create beauty.
An encounter with beauty will always have some underlying material reality—a physical structure, texture, or aromatic compound.
Innovation of meaning must therefore be combined with innovation in materials to deliver innovation in beauty.
Art–science. Marketing–R&D. Today–tomorrow. It is never one or the other.
We keep continuity between the two in each pair, swinging back and forth between them like a pendulum.
Never shying away from trade-off decisions, we work in lockstep with the marketing team, giving us the organizational agility to react and respond to the subtlest signs of change.
By keeping R&D relevant to market realities, we ensure that the outcome of our research will have commercial potential. But this outcome will be more than just a product. It is to deliver beauty to someone and make a positive difference in that person’s life.
Many lack confidence. Many experience a hidden burden of loneliness. Many feel uncared for. Beauty empowers people to start taking small steps to tackle these modern-day problems.
Beautiful hair will stir up the courage to venture out.
Beautiful skin will stimulate desire for social interaction.
Making yourself beautiful will lead to a new relationship.
The new relationship will, in turn, lead to another new relationship.
This positive sequence is what we want to support, and we call it the Chain of Happiness.
We believe that beauty heals.
We believe that beauty gives hope.
We believe that beauty creates new relationships.
The Value-Creation Lab will continue to lead the way in unlocking the science of beauty and its socially transformative power.
Hirotaka Takeuchi
Head of the Value-Creation Lab
About I-ne’s Value-Creation Lab
A new R&D model that embraces market partnership
The Value-Creation Lab, established in 2024, takes an asset-lite approach (a flexible approach that makes the most of external partners’ assets). Challenging R&D norms, we co-create new market value in partnership with consumers and also with OEMs, suppliers of raw materials, and external partners.
Creating something meaningful through the fusion of marketing and technology
I-ne has always used its marketing prowess to glean insights from consumers, leading to one hit product after the next. The Value-Creation Lab takes this approach further by blending it organically with technology to produce an outcome that holds meaning for consumers and potential for stakeholders.
Quick and flexible in creating the value people want
Our purpose is not to pursue technological advancement for its own sake. We listen to feedback from consumers and consider the alternative perspectives held by engineers in OEMs and materials manufacturers and by academic researchers. With this melting pot of ideas, we can be quick and flexible in adapting to a volatile market landscape.
Through this cycle, we will continue to deliver value that is truly relevant.
Breaking new ground, offering new options
Our mission is to venture into areas of innovation that large enterprises seldom reach and to use the quick-wittedness of a startup to offer options that never existed in the market previously.
This mission goes beyond developing a product—it involves challenging the very nature of the relationship between society and the market.
In this quest, we work alongside partners to co-create something of value for tomorrow’s world.
This value-creating, market-oriented approach marks the future of R&D, a future that consumers will choose and that we are forging together with stakeholders.
Members of the Value-Creation Lab (as of April 2025)
Hirotaka Takeuchi
Hirotaka Takeuchi began his career as a researcher at Pola Chemical Industries Inc. In 2011, he conducted research at Boston University on the mechanisms of skin aging. After returning to Japan, Takeuchi became leader of Pola Chemical Industries’ B.A Research Center. In that role, he oversaw the development of innovative products. One such product was Wrinkle Shot, which astonished the market on its release in 2017 as Japan’s first anti-aging serum classified as a quasi-drug. Takeuchi was involved in the Wrinkle Shot project from the outset and led each phase, from basic research and mechanism discovery to commercialization and market launch. Takeuchi later joined Premia Wellness Science and took on a strategic planning role spanning corporate-level leadership, marketing, and R&D. In that role, he integrated technology with business. He joined I-ne in 2023.
Toshihiro Arai
When Toshihiro Arai was at Pola Chemical Industries, he gained broad knowledge on cosmetics development from his experience in designing skincare formulations, evaluating quality, and a variety of other operations. He started channeling this experience into developing an AI algorithm for analyzing data on cosmetics formulations and aesthetic aspects. The result was Kanshoku-Zukuri AI, the industry’s first AI application for modeling tactile sensations. The AI model has been presented at several academic societies and has patents pending. Arai later joined Accenture, where he further established himself as an AI expert by developing and assisting in the implementation of AI analytics for marketing and for sales and operations planning. He joined I-ne in April 2024. At the Value-Creation Lab, Arai engages in planning R&D strategy, oversees research projects on new ingredients and formulations, and assists in the development phase.
The Value-Creation Lab’s Mission
Boost short-term growth drivers
・Build internal technology infrastructure to enable an asset-lite approach, collaborating with partners to create the optimum in cosmetics
・Explore new materials and technologies to further differentiate I-ne brands
・Build a better infrastructure for cosmetics development (development process, quality and texture evaluation, PR, cosmetic compliance) to achieve product excellence
Combining existing technology to create immediate and medium-term innovation
・Use partnerships with academia to discover untapped technological possibilities and dormant intellectual property, creating innovation in the immediate and medium term
・Use strategic partnerships with stakeholders to create new haircare and skincare formulations