Tetsuya Kaida serves as the founder and Chief Learning Officer of the Idea Lab at the Nagaoka University of Technology (NUT). The NUT Idea Lab, based on the Japanese concept of “shugyo” (修行), or training without any ending, aims to give birth to a new meaning of collaboration that benefits the university, society, and the government.

Prior to joining NUT, Tetsuya Kaida spent nearly 30 years at Toyota Motor Corporation in several divisions, including service, marketing development and product planning. He is one of the brilliant minds behind Toyota Motor Corporation’s revolutionary design philosophies and innovative technologies. 

Among his many accomplishments, in 2002, Kaida embarked upon restructuring global Motor Shows by using concept cars and innovative space design. Two years later, he developed “Today for Tomorrow”, as a technology development philosophy focused on harmonizing the human experience with its environment, resulting to humans becoming healthier, safer and surrounded by even more excitement, more beauty and more enjoyment than today.

If Tetsuya Kaida has his way, we’ll soon be driving ultralight cars built of kelp and transparent vehicles featuring “mood training” dashboards that mirror our psychological state. As one of Toyota’s main drivers for innovation, Tetsuya has the power to make such fantastic concepts real. He was behind projects such as Toyota 1/X, the RIN vehicle (a virtual meditation chamber on wheels as well as the Toyota 1/X) and Toyota i-REAL (a mobile armchair capable of running twenty miles per hour), all previously unveiled at the Tokyo Auto Show.

In 2012, Mr. Kaida founded Kaze Creative Enterprise, a consulting firm focused on business plan development, research and design, and advanced education.

Tetsuya Kaida is originally from Gifu prefecture and attended the University of Tokyo.