Special Feature: Comprehensive Commercialization

Comprehensive Commercialization
Functions
Masato Mizoguchi†, Takayuki Okimura,and Atsushi Matsuda
Abstract
To meet the diverse and complicated needs of customers in the rapidly growing information and communications market, NTT is backing its R&D efforts by comprehensive commercialization functions.
This article introduces NTT’s commercialization activities and gives several examples of them.

1. Background
Since the reorganization of the NTT Group in 1999,
the R&D Division of the holding company has steadily supplied companies in the NTT Group withresearch and development results. In November2002, NTT announced its “Vision for a new opticalgeneration — Broadband leading to the world of resonant communication” [1]. Anticipating breakthrough changes that will lead to the emergence of asafe and rich social life and business operations, it

represents the common theme that unites NTT Group
companies in the full-scale broadband ubiquitous era
that will be ushered in by optical technology in thenear future.
In line with this vision, the R&D Division introduced “comprehensive commercialization functions”
in July 2003 to reinforce efforts to commercialize
R&D results (Fig. 1). R&D activities are roughly
divided into the “establishment of core technology”
as a source of competitive advantages and “development for commercialization” to turn promising

Needs found at business corporations

ResearchResearch
Research

Development ofcore technology
Development ofcore technology

Establishment offundamental technologies• Discerning judgment• Analysis of market andtechnological trends• Marketing• Development plans & proposals• Creating a new market andexploiting new business

Market trends••••••

Comprehensive
commercialization functions

Existing technologies andproducts on the market• Practical application via allianceswith relevant companies in relatedindustries• Applied R&D efforts made bybusiness corporations
Development forcommercialization

Introduction inbusiness

Development aimed at introducing thecreated core technology in businessFig. 1. Comprehensive commercialization functions.
† NTT Department III
Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, 100-8116 Japan
E-mail: m.mizoguchi@hco.ntt.co.jp

12NTT Technical Review

Activities

research themes into revenue-generating business. A
comprehensive producer is a person who has fullauthority and responsibility for managing a development for commercialization.
2. Outline
There is said to be a “valley of death” [2] between
the R&D stage and the introduction of marketableproducts and services. Many R&D results fail tomake it to commercial usefulness because of the difficulty of judging their feasibility. To overcome thisbarrier, the comprehensive producer tries to determine how core technology developed by NTT Laboratories can be turned into business applications.
More specifically, he or she makes a discerning judgment for a technological theme, analyses market
trends and customer needs, and conducts market surveys to prepare planning proposals in the development for commercialization appropriate for eachtechnological theme. In running a development project, every comprehensive producer promises his/her
own commitment targets in terms of quantitative
business scale and also takes responsibility for thecommercialization process. To carry out this responsibility, the comprehensive producer has overall
authority for allocating and reviewing businessresources and withdrawing from the project if he/she
decides it will be unprofitable.
Conversion into business applications is actively
addressed in view of the alliances not only among
companies within the NTT Group but also with companies outside the NTT Group while paying attention
to the combination of widely ranging fundamental
technologies owned by NTT’s R&D with the existing
technologies on the market at the most timelymoment. In addition, we try to pursue the possibilityof applying the accumulated communications-related
technologies to other fields through the comprehensive commercialization functions. The establishmentof the comprehensive commercialization functions
clarified the burden of risk and the range of responsibilities among the Group companies, thereby
enabling steadier and more efficient execution of various developments. In December 2003, NTT established NTT Resonant Inc., which focuses on commercializing new services on the basis of various
business seeds created by the NTT Laboratories. The
comprehensive commercialization functions will
pursue NTT Group’s Medium-term Management
Strategy released in November 2004 [3].

Vol. 3 No. 5 May 2005

3. Examples
Figure 2 shows several ongoing technologicalthemes. Some of them are discussed in detail in theother articles in this special feature. Below, we briefly
mention some that are not, but have achieved considerable success thanks to the effective comprehensive
commercialization activities.
3.1 “Ate!?melo” music search service
This new service allows mobile phone users to discover the title and artist name of music that they are
currently listening to by holding the phone near thesound source (e.g., TV or radio) for about 20 seconds.
The service, called “Ate!?melo” (meaning “what’sthat melody?”), on NTT’s portal site “goo” is supplied by NTT Resonant. It began on December 15,
2004 [4]. Prior the start of this service, we performed
a demonstration at “in the city Tokyo 2004”, an event
held in October 2004 by the music entertainment
industry, to hear and collect opinions from music fansand contents holders, confirm appropriate service
needs, and promote the service launch [5].
This music search service was achieved by combining fast media search technology and service integration technology, both developed by NTT Laboratories. The search technology produces characteristic
information called an audio “fingerprint” from a fragment of music captured by a mobile phone. Then,from this fingerprint, a specific music title is pin• Service platform– Sound-input type music search service• Resonant service– Navigation project• Security✔ Secure enterprize network access control system• Smart card
✔ Type-B smart card mobile phone• Open source software (OSS)✔ Promotion of OSS use• Environment and energy✔ Public environmental IT system✔ iDC Shield Vault• Business creation✔ Proximity communication technology using
human body as signal path
– “Wonderhorn” singing voice synthesis
technology• Devices✔ “FingerQuick” fingerprint identification devices– Super luminescent diode✔ Discussed in one of the other special feature articles.
– Briefly mentioned in this article.

Fig. 2. Examples of themes covered by thecomprehensive commercialization functions.

13

Special Feature

Activation of the contents market

Copyright management organizations
JASRACGoods“Ate!?melo” sound-input type mobile
music search service:Music search via mobile phones + affiliations arisingfrom search results (CD sales, ring tones, music, etc.)
Marketing-related services such as the utilization of results fordiverse campaigns and the supply of consumer behavior dataRIAJ

CPRA

Database

Contents holders
Record Production
Music
companies companies publishers
Database

Broadcasting monitoring service:

Internet monitoring service:

Supply of the list of broadcast music titles

Monitoring of illegal files

Supply of on-air information about artists
and ranking information

Measurement of promotional
effects on the Internet

Supply of the platform for service collaboration

Correlative analysis data between media
exposure and sales information

CTI facilities

Broadcast reception facilities

Contents aggregation platform(Supply, maintenance, and management ofdatabases to find the desired contents)

Fingerprint database

Collaboration

Database collaboration

CDConsumers
Ring tones/ Tickets
musicInternet surfing robot

Metadata database

Fig. 3. Contents aggregation platform and services bound for the contents market.

pointed in a huge database that includes attributeinformation (metadata) about the contents. In addition, the service integration technology lets several
servers, including computer-telephony integration(CTI) servers for receiving and handling phone calls
and fingerprint-matching servers, collaborate witheach other, enabling us to flexibly extend or change
the service in the future.
We attempted to diversify search methods througha mobile phone such as supporting a humming
search, searching by humming a part of a tune, orvoice recognition search. Based on the audio fingerprint database, NTT plans to build up an evolving“contents aggregation platform” including broadcasting/Internet monitoring service and music ID conversion service useful for various affiliation services forcontents holders, copyright management organizations and broadcasting service operators throughrepeated experimental tests jointly performed withpartners in each industry (Fig. 3).
3.2 Navigation project using goo labs.
Navigating technology is becoming more and more
important to enable effective utilization of Internet
information, which continues to grow at an exponential rate along with the rapid propagation of broadband communications. NTT and NTT Resonant set
up a joint navigation experiment to test third-generation search services that will enable users to getappropriate information related to business and entertainment. Marketing in preparation for the launch of14commercial services is in progress with some open
joint tests on goo labs. [6], a Web site designed forfield evaluation of NTT’s research results. The open
experiments started by this project include “TopicMaster” to classify and display search results of news
articles, “BlogScope” to efficiently search all sentences of web-log articles and topical articles(launched in goo’s commercial service on February1st), “Personal Summary” that allows users to view
their favorite contents arranged in a free layout via
simple drag&drop manipulation, and “HotWindow+”
to automatically select and display the latest topics
from news sites and blog sites (Fig. 4). The projectencourages many customers to directly experience
new navigation techniques and provide frank feedback so that both applied technologies and services
can be enhanced as soon as possible.
3.3 “Wonderhorn” singing voice synthesis
technology“Wonderhorn” is a computerized synthesis technology for creating voice messages in a particular person’s singing voice. It blends music and lyrics that theuser inputs with a singing voice taken from a personalized database of previously registered voices byapplying a model for reproducing the harmonic overtone structure appropriate to each individual and mixture technology for special residual noises extracted
from actual singing voices (Fig. 5). “Wonderhorn”
has already been furnished by NTT Advanced Technology (NTT-AT) to companies in the entertainment
NTT Technical Review

Special FeatureNews-article classification/search experimentWeb-page personalization sophistication experiment“Personal Summary”• Searched results are displayedusing category labels.
• Overview of search results canbe seen
• Easy narrowing-down• New information can be found easily.

• Intuitive drag&drop manipulation• Contents described in RSS or HTML
format can be displayed

Search the future

Blog search experiment

Hot topics display experiment“Blog Scope”

Creation of new,third-generation
search services• Selection and display of topical words by genre• Genre selection according to user’s interest level• Three types of the interface to encourageawareness depending on the usage scene• Technology for searching similar articles• Realtime link analysis technology with ahighly-efficient, original database

RSS: resource description framework site summary
HTML: hypertext markup language

Fig. 4. Navigation project.

Lyrics writtenby the user

Voice of user’s
chosen singer

Personalized singing
voice message

Song written by Bach

Personalized databaseof singing voices

Fig. 5. Example of using “Wonderhorn”.

field including game and music education. Anyone
can try the singing voice synthesis function using thesample voice database Utabara.com [7] operated byNTT-AT.
3.4 Super luminescent diode used for medicalimaging
We are trying to apply some of the leading-edge
optical device technology developed by NTT for optical communications systems to other fields. One suchtechnology is a super luminescent diode (SLD) lightsource, which we are trying to apply to optical coherVol. 3 No. 5 May 2005

ence tomography (OCT) for medical purposes. OCT
is a noninvasive in-vivo imaging technique. Figure 6
shows OCT images of masu salmon eggs provided byYamagata Promotional Organization for Industrial
Technology. The combination of OCT with an endoscope is expected to provide early detection and medical treatment of various cancers. The SLD lightsource provides a wide bandwidth (1310-nm band)and high intensity (at least 30 mW for fiber-coupledemission). It should lead to much clearer and finer
tomographic images. The SLD light source is alreadybeing sold by NTT Electronics (NEL) [8].
15Special Feature

3 mm in diameter

Masato Mizoguchi

Salmon eggs

2 mm

6 hours after
insemination

Senior Manager, R&D Produce Group, NTT
Department III (R&D Strategy Department).
He received the B.E. and M.E. degrees in electrical engineering from Tokyo University of Science, Tokyo in 1989 and 1991, respectively.
Since joining NTT in 1991, he has mainly been
engaged in R&D of the personal handy-phonesystem (PHS) and high data rate wireless LANs
such as IEEE 802.11a. Since 2004, he has beenworking in the R&D Planning Team for comprehensive commercialization functions. He
received the Young Researcher’s Award and theBest Paper Award from the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers(IEICE) of Japan in 1998 and 2000, respectively.
He is a member of IEICE and IEEE.

Takayuki Okimura
2 days after
insemination
3 mmFig. 6. OCT images showing the growth state of masu
salmon eggs.

Senior Manager, R&D Produce Group, NTTDepartment III (R&D Strategy Department).
He received the B.E. and M.E. degrees in electronics from Kyushu University, Fukuoka in
1985 and 1987, respectively. In 1987, he joined
NTT, where he was engaged in R&D of electronic display systems. He is now engaged in
R&D planning for comprehensive commercialization functions. He is a member of IEICE andthe Institute of Image Information and TelevisionEngineers.

References
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
[6]
[7]
[8]

16

N. Wada, “Vision for a New Optical Generation,” NTT Technical
Review, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 6-17, 2003.
http://www.atp.nist.gov/atp/secy_rept/evans_rpt.htm“NTT Group’s Medium-term Management Strategy,” NTT Technical
Review, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 38-44, 2005.
http://mobile.goo.ne.jp/melody/ (in Japanese).
http://www.inthecity.jp/ (in Japanese).
http://labs.goo.ne.jp/ (in Japanese).
http://www.utabara.com/ (in Japanese).
http://www.nel-world.com/news/news_sep04_1.html

Atsushi Matsuda
Senior Manager, R&D Produce Group, NTTDepartment III (R&D Strategy Department).
He received the B.E. and M.E. degrees in civilengineering from Tokyo Institute of Technology,
Tokyo in 1982 and 1984, respectively. In 1984,
he joined NTT, where he was engaged in thedevelopment of outside plant and telecommunications plant planning management. For threeyears prior to his present position, he was incharge of the audio visual and sales department
in NTT Learning Systems. He is currently a chiefof the R&D Planning Team for comprehensive
commercialization functions.

NTT Technical Review