The European marketing manager very kindly told me that the only way to interest the Japanese was to come up with a highly innovative prototype.
I presented him with a very attractive loudspeaker prototype, but he turned it down: « now we’re on satellite/subwoofer systems, and besides, it’s not innovative enough ». Three weeks later I came back with a satellite. « Great, you’ve got half an hour to present it to the PIONEER staff ».
16 of them looked at it from every angle for an hour, talking to each other in Japanese! At the end, they looked up at me to ask how much I wanted for it, and the transfer papers were signed immediately after!
This satellite has the particularity of orienting itself perfectly towards the audience, whether it’s placed on a shelf, fixed to the wall, or on the ceiling. Thanks to its shape, which features a cylindrical part that rotates at 45°, any position is possible, and in every position you get the impression that the design has been studied for!
I later developed a robotized version: a camera on each satellite tracks the faces of people in the room, and thanks to two motors controlled by artificial intelligence, the orientation of the satellites and the sound balance are automatically adjusted according to the number of people and their positions.
Prospective Design 