About MASAMICHI SOUZOU
We apply state-of-the-art design techniques to build the world for your happiness
Our Mission
A New Kind of Company
We are Masamichi Souzou (正道想像), meaning “Correct Path, Imagined/Created” in Japanese. We are a company looking to optimize the world's happiness. We build products and services that support individuals to make changes that will improve their happiness, and to help organizations and governments to put in place supports that will improve the happiness of their employees, partners, customers, and citizens.
Our Values
CONSIDER EVERYTHING
We consider everything. Everything in the world is connected together in very complex ways, and nothing falls outside of our purview.
OPTIMIZE HAPPINESS
We seek the greatest possible happiness for the greatest number of people over the longest period of time.
UNIVERSAL RESPONSIBILITY
We look to understand and take responsibility for the TOTAL impact of all of our actions in the world, no matter the degrees of separation.
Working on happiness
Meet our team
Founder & Designer
J. Paul Neeley
J. Paul is a designer & researcher based in London with expertise in service design & speculative design, and extensive healthcare experience. He has worked at the Mayo Clinic in the Center for Innovation on patient experience and care delivery models, and teaches at the Royal College of Art in London on Service Design. He has been actively exploring approaches for the optimization of happiness for the past 10 years.
Co-Founder & Strategist
Elliott Wortham
Elliott is a strategist & designer working in Richmond, Virginia and San Jose, Costa Rica. He has degrees in Sociology and Health Administration, and a variety of experiences working in health and across healthcare organizations such as Cleveland Clinic. Elliott is intensely interested in how technology is changing the way we design services and products for health and happiness.
Build Your Happiness
Supporting personal, organizational, and civic happiness
In a world where everything is connected, there is no system, activity, or interaction that falls outside our purview. And through the appropriate consideration of every part of this beautifully complex world we work to optimize for human happiness.
We believe that the ultimate design intent is happiness. It doesn't matter what we are trying to do in life, better relationships, better job, get fit, eat better, more money, bigger, better, faster, slower, stronger, smarter, etc… we undertake these efforts because we believe that achieving them will help us to be happier.
Happiness is a very complex experience, with many facets. We start with the idea that much of happiness is actually an evolved chemical sensation that lets us know when we are doing things right in terms of survival.
Unfortunately much of the world is not designed to support happiness, and is actually antithetical to its achievement. Current business & design practices optimize for profit and fail to consider the larger cumulative impact of these activities over time.
But what if things were different? What if we designed the world for happiness?
Common Questions
FAQ
We define happiness as an emergent feeling that indicates when our needs in terms of survival have been met. It is a balanced ebb and flow of pleasure and purpose over time. It is a feeling of peace, calm, and contentment. And happiness is an outcome of our daily behaviors, genetics, and context.
We look to create the greatest amount of happiness over the longest period of time for the greatest number of people.
Our team has designed and developed products and services for some of the best companies in the world, and trained and taught at some of the best design schools in the world, including the Royal College of Art. We use these same approaches (Design Thinking, Service Design, Speculative Design, etc) and focus them on the design for your happiness.
We don't optimize our company for profit, but rather everything we do is focused on our mission to optimize the world's happiness. From our team's 4 day work weeks, to a focus on basic income, sleep / diet / exercise support, and more, we are designing everything for happiness.
Something unique?
Bespoke Consulting
Interested in solving the specific challenges facing you, your business, or your community? We work on bespoke consulting projects to support your specific needs and goals around happiness.
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Happiness Development Fund
Our Happiness Development fund allows you to donate directly to activities working to improve the world's happiness. Your support funds a global wave of work looking to explore, understand, and create a world that better supports human happiness.
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