In 2025, the HTF held its first Open Forum, inviting external researchers.
To what extent should we open the discussions we have refined internally to the outside world?
Why take this step while facing the realities of confidentiality?
Yuji Yasui of the Intelligence Domain at Innovative Research Excellence, who led this project, explains the motivation:
When we have real, in-depth discussions with academic researchers, the next steps become clear.

Yasui: To be honest, I was surprised. I didn't think it would turn into this. When I first got involved eight years ago, there weren’t many sessions. Even so, the number of collaborators grew. Discussions that started with simple Q&A about individual technologies gained heat, expanding across domains and increasing in intensity as people said, “I want to hear this,” or, “I want to discuss that.”

Yasui: This isn't just an internal presentation. It has become a place where deeper, more passionate discussions are held, and where we can even talk about future technical strategies.

That is exactly why we want to increase the number of questions that cannot be solved within the company alone.
By bringing in external knowledge, we can raise the resolution of our discussions even further.
That was the starting point for the Open Forum.

Opening up to the outside world sounds simple, but corporate research involves confidential information.
The Open Forum does not gloss over this reality.
Rather than opening everything, we design the scope of what can be shared to make it work.

Yasui: We inevitably have secrets, so what we can put out is limited. But it’s also a fact that what we can share is not zero. If that’s the case, we can create a proper framework limited to content that can be disclosed. I thought that alone could trigger joint research opportunities.

Yasui: When people realize, “Oh, that’s what you were working on?” the next steps start coming into view.

Opening up is not about becoming defenseless.
It is about opening up to expand the future while protecting what must be protected.
This sense of balance reflects the practical reality of Honda’s research.

The goal of the Open Forum is not to exchange business cards.
It is to define the outline of joint research through serious discussion.

Yasui: Even with professors I’ve met at academic societies, I sometimes don’t actually know the depth of what they are working on.

When you speak frankly in this setting, relationships get rewired.
As the resolution of the conversation improves, the details of what to work on together next become concrete.

Yasui: When people realize, “Oh, that’s what you were working on?” the next steps start coming into view.

The deeper the discussion, the more the next move takes a tangible shape.
The Open Forum is designed to intentionally increase the probability of this happening.

Another achievement was communicating to the outside world exactly what Honda has been building up.

Yasui: The professors seemed surprised that Honda is conducting such deep research and discussing it through internal conferences. I feel we have truly conveyed that we aren't doing this just for product development, but that we are putting things out into the world based on deep foundational research.

Corporate research is often perceived narrowly as research for the sake of products.
But at the HTF, we run research as research, and from there we connect it to social implementation.
Communicating that core principle provides the foundation for future collaborations.

Yasui: I believe we should continue this. We should also expand into more domains. When the chemical reactions happening inside the company connect with the outside, the speed and direction of research will change. If this ripple effect grows, it could become a driving force that moves the flow of research in Japan as a whole. That would be incredibly exciting.

We have no intention of letting the Open Forum remain just a one-time new initiative.
We will carefully absorb feedback and insights from participants and stakeholders, and refine them for the next term.
Bringing internal chemical reactions to the outside world. Beyond that, both research and people will accelerate even further.