When Innovation Becomes Invisible

Over dinner this week in Tokyo, a friend visiting for business told me: “Japan is not as innovative as it used to be.”

He works in AI software at a major PC company, and from that perspective he’s right: Japan never led in apps or platforms, and it lost the consumer electronics battle to South Korea and China.

But here’s what most people miss: Japan didn’t lose innovation. Japan made innovation invisible.

The real action isn’t in apps. It’s in the layers under the apps: materials, photonics, semiconductors, sensors, energy systems, packaging, industrial processes, and precision components. These upstream technologies power AI, EVs, robotics, chips, displays, machinery and advanced batteries, and Japanese companies quietly dominate many of them.

Even clothing, one of the most commoditized industries, depends on upstream Japan: industrial sewing machines, fibers, and most of the zippers on the planet.

Invisible, but essential.

And here is my message for many startups today:

The next decade won’t belong to the loudest founders or the flashiest apps. It will belong to the people solving hard, invisible, technical problems, the ones that actually move the world forward.

Software is no longer the frontier; it’s the interface.

The frontier now is deep tech: materials, photonics, semiconductors, sensing, new architectures, new physics, and new manufacturing methods. This is where the breakthroughs will come from. This is where real value will be created. This is where the next global leaders will emerge.

Japan silently operates in this invisible layer.

The next generation of innovators will as well.