esse-sense Future Forum 2026
Encountering the Future
Orchestrating knowledge into industry creation
2026 9/16Wed–17Thu Tokyo Midtown Yaesu
Biomanufacturing, rejuvenation and longevity, neuroscience and BMI — in the fields that may become the next industries, some 200 researchers from universities and research institutes meet corporate executives, investors, universities, government and startups about 1,000 people for two days. An invitation-only conference, now in its fourth edition.Two days to meet research knowledge before it becomes a business, and to leave with a hypothesis for your own next theme.
On 16 and 17 September 2026 we hold the fourth esse-sense Future Forum: Encountering the Future — orchestrating knowledge into industry creation. Read the history of how industries were created, and in every case an accumulation and an orchestration of knowledge by researchers and research institutes came first, before any business was built.
One technology, one discovery, one question. They meet people, capital and place, they are bound together, and in time they become an industry. We propose to read that whole process not as the work of a single protagonist but as collaboration across sectors and an orchestration of knowledge — that is this year's theme.
Deep Science and Deep Knowledge: inquiry that descends to the roots of life and matter, and inquiry that descends to the roots of human life — body, place, the everyday. And the questions futures research throws back at us from the future.
Some 200 researchers from universities and research institutes, together with corporate executives, investors, universities, government and startups about 1,000 people spend two days together at a conference we believe to be without parallel in Japan, Two days to meet research knowledge before it becomes a business, and to leave with a hypothesis for your own next theme.
This year we welcome, on the first day, Patrick Noack of the Dubai Future Foundation, who builds future strategy for industry creation in Dubai and leads its largest invitation-only conference of some 3,000 people. Through his keynote and his conversation with leading Japanese researchers and executives, we build a bridge between Japan and Dubai. Alongside him, executives of Prime-listed companies, founders of strong startups, researchers working at the frontier of each field, and players from financial institutions, foundations and venture capital take the stage — and meet one another.
We look forward to welcoming you again this year.
Yuya Nishimura, CEO, esse-sense Inc.
from a single field of knowledge.
We let knowledge play together.
for Industry Creation
Dubai Future Forum
An institution that implements the futureas industrial strategy rather than prediction.
“The future belongs to those who can imagine it, design it and execute it.” Under that principle, the Government of Dubai established a future-strategy institution in 2016: Dubai Future Foundation . Known for its landmark building, it operates the Museum of the Future and hosts one of the world's largest futurist gatherings, Dubai Future Forum . It brings futures research, future councils across thirteen industry sectors, and the World Economic Forum Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution UAE into a single organisation, and has spent a decade carrying foresight through to implementation.
Dr Patrick Noack, who gives the keynote, leads all three of those core functions at the Foundation. He was previously a senior policy adviser at the Royal Society, and has worked on scenarios and foresight for more than twenty years across government, the United Nations and the private sector. Here you hear the design directly from someone who has implemented foresight as industrial strategy at national scale: how knowledge of the future is connected to the creation of industry.
Sources: Dubai Future Foundation official site; Dubai Government Media Office (figures for Dubai Future Forum 2025 as announced by the organisers). Final wording of the title will be confirmed with the speaker.
Future Anthropology
Read the future as it is already being lived —rather than predicting it.
Read the future as it is already lived.
Futures anthropology sits at the frontier of both anthropology and futures studies. Rather than trying to get the future right by probability, it uses ethnography to grasp how people imagine, hope for, fear and already live the future in their daily lives. Neither the adoption of a technology nor the turning of an industry happens anywhere but on top of that imagination.
The field grew out of a lab, “Anthropology at the Edge of the Future”, held at the 2014 EASA conference in Tallinn, and took form as the ten-point Futures Anthropologies Manifesto. The Future Anthropologies Network (EASA), founded in the same year, has since carried the practice outward through panels and labs at international conferences. Prof. Sarah Pink , who gives the keynote, is a co-author of that manifesto and a co-founder of the network.
What decides a future strategy is not the accuracy of its scenarios but how its premises are set. From the person who opened this field, you hear how to see the myths embedded in technology — the stories about the future we believe without noticing. It is time to inspect the premises your own plans stand on.
Sources: Future Anthropologies Network (EASA) official page; “Futures Anthropologies Manifesto” in Salazar, Pink, Irving and Sjöberg (eds), Anthropologies and Futures: Researching Emerging and Uncertain Worlds (Bloomsbury, 2017); Monash University researcher page. Final wording of the title will be confirmed with the speaker.
Day 1: industry creation, with Dubai.Day 2: future strategy, with futures studies.
Both mornings are for receiving, from outside, an account of what is actually happening. Day 1 takes industry creation from the Dubai Future Foundation, which has implemented the future as industrial strategy at national scale. Day 2 takes future creation from futures anthropology, which questions the myths inside our technologies. You hear these practitioners and researchers directly, in keynotes and panels (sessions with international guests are simultaneously interpreted).
Keynote — three sessions
Panel — 12:50 / Industry creation and the orchestration of knowledge
Keynote — two sessions
Played Synclavier and digital guitar on Michael Jackson's BAD and performed on the BAD world tour. He has since worked on numerous projects with NASA, Disney Imagineering, Sega and Nintendo, among others. Read his full profile →
Panel — 12:40 / Leadership that connects the future to industry
The fulltwo-day programme
Yutaka Anma esse-sense
Patrick Noack Dubai Future Foundation
Keisuke Goda The University of Tokyo / Tohoku University
Takayuki Miyagi Partner, PwC
Yasuo Nishiyama President and CEO, Hakuhodo DY Holdings Inc.
| Time | A4F ROOM 1Deep Science | B4F ROOM 2Deep Knowledge | C4F Temporary OfficeThemes & Global | D4F Panorama RoomStartups × VC | E5F StudioInvitation-only workshops |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 14:30 | |||||
| 16:00 | |||||
| 17:30 |
Yutaka Anma esse-sense
Isao Miyama Executive Officer and Partner, PwC / Head of Future Design Lab
Yoichi Takizawa Director, Public Sector Tech Business Unit, AWS
Sarah Pink Monash University
Tatsuo Ogawa CTO, Panasonic
Mutsuo Iwai Corporate Adviser, Japan Tobacco
Christopher Currell Althea Project GK
| Time | A4F ROOM 1Deep Science | B4F ROOM 2Deep Knowledge | C4F Temporary OfficeThemes & Global | D4F Panorama RoomStartups × VC | E5F StudioInvitation-only workshops |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 14:30 | |||||
| 16:00 | |||||
| 17:30 |
The timetable is provisional. Content, times and speakers may change.
Five venues,five kinds of breakout running in parallel
Both mornings are keynotes and panels on the main stage. Both afternoons, five venues (A to E) run twenty-four breakout sessions at once — open panels, thematic sessions, startups with VCs, invitation-only workshops — plus the seventy-two slots in track D.
Sponsors
The forum is made possible by companies that share our aim of creating new industries.
Three years of encounterswhere businesses and industries begin.
An invitation-only researchers' conference begun in 2023, where corporate executives, R&D leaders and investors meet frontier researchers and look for where the next business or industry begins. 2026 is the fourth edition.
2024 figures: 1,467 attendees (2,392 including repeat days), 34 sessions, 170 speakers. About 3,000 people across three years.
Source: esse-sense Future Forum 2025 sponsor materials and activity report.
Partners: co-hosting universities (OIST, The University of Tokyo, Ritsumeikan University) and co-hosting institutions (JST, the Young Academy of the Science Council of Japan, GTIE and the university startup ecosystems of nine regions across Japan).
esse-sense Future Forum 2023–2025
What speakers said, where the room looked, the countless conversations exchanged. A record of past editions. Click a photograph to enlarge it.
Photographs from past editions of the esse-sense Future Forum (2023 and 2024). Credit: Miratuku (NPO) / esse-sense.
Registration
On-site (venue)
Prices exclude tax; 10% consumption tax is added. The above are on-site fees, covering both days. Your tier is determined automatically by the application date in Japan time.
Online (streaming)
Online (one-day viewing) Online (two-day viewing) Fixed priceincl. tax+ tax We could not retrieve the online viewing fee. About online viewing We could not retrieve the fee. Please try again shortly.Online viewing is not subject to early-bird pricing; the fee stays the same until the event. Keynotes and breakout tracks A, B, C and E are streamed, with archive access for one year after the forum.About online viewing →
What you take away from the two days
- A hypothesis for a new business themeThe keynotes on both mornings, and twenty-four breakouts running in parallel across five venues. Choose along the field you are exploring, and leave with it shaped into the theme you should examine next.
- Resolution on the field you are exploringResearchers from universities and research institutes speak about their own work in the language of business. How far it has come, and what remains unsolved, in the words of the people doing it.
- The person you should meet nextTwo days with corporates, VCs, universities, foundations and startups on the same floor. In 2024, 1,467 people attended and 170 took the stage.
Corporate executives, new business development, R&D and technology strategy, innovation strategy, CVC, financial institutions, universities, government, foundations and startups. Two days for about 1,000 people, by invitation, for those imagining what industry does next.
About 3 minutes / Payment by credit card (Stripe)