One day, a letter arrived. It stated that the documents I had created belonged to the company.

Legally speaking, this is nothing unusual. Documents and deliverables created by employees as part of their duties belong to the employer. This is common practice in Japan. I do not mean to challenge this fact itself. Rather, I found myself drawn to a different question that lay beyond it: what is it that the company actually owns?

For instance, consider a single PowerPoint slide. It contains text, diagrams, and a title. The law looks at these elements. Is it protected as a copyrighted work? Does it qualify as a work made for hire? Who is the copyright holder? These are important questions. However, my curiosity was drawn elsewhere: what existed before that PowerPoint slide was ever created?

I have worked in the telecommunications industry. I have worked in manufacturing. I have collaborated with certification bodies, and I have worked at software companies. Each industry has its own language, its own common knowledge, and its own landscape. Yet, from time to time, there are moments when these disparate parts appear connected. Telecommunications, certification, factories, data, AI—moments when they reveal themselves not as separate markets, but as a single, coherent structure. In those moments, people draw new diagrams, coin new terms, and define new markets.

I have spent a long time repeating this process. Decision Stack, Industrial OS, Trust OS. Although the names differed, I was essentially pondering the same things: How do we view the world? How do we define markets? Why do people act? Where do decisions originate? I was mapping these questions into diagrams.

Some might say that it is just a slide deck, just PowerPoint, just corporate work. That may well be true. However, I view it somewhat differently. The documents are merely the final output. The true value lies in the perspective that underpins them.

Consider an architect. An architect designs a house. But does the architect's value reside in the blueprints themselves? Of course, the blueprints are important. Yet, the essential value lies in the decisions made: where to place a wall, where to open a window, and where to let the light shine in. The blueprint is simply the result of those choices.

Recently, I have begun to conceptualize my work using a different term: Boundary Designer. Someone who designs boundaries. The boundary between telecommunications and manufacturing, the boundary between software and infrastructure, the boundary between humans and AI, the boundary between organization and individual, the boundary between meaning and ownership. By redrawing these boundaries, new markets and new narratives are born.

And here, a single question emerges: to whom do boundaries belong? One can own a blueprint. One can own text, or a logo. But who owns the perspective on a market? Who owns the generation of meaning? Who owns the design of boundaries?

With the advent of AI, this question has grown even larger. AI writes text. Humans edit it. Corporations utilize it. Users interpret it. If so, where is the value actually being generated? Is it in the text? The algorithm? The editing? Or is it in the community?

Our current legal systems do not yet possess adequate language to address this question. We have copyrights, patents, and trademarks. Yet, when it comes to how we recognize the "one who establishes meaning," the discussion still seems to be in its infancy.

I have no desire to dispute, nor do I wish to assign blame. I am simply curious about where value is generated in society today, and who is deemed to own that value.

A single incident was merely an entry point to this inquiry. The truly fascinating part lies ahead. This is not just a story about corporations and individuals. Nor is it about AI and humans, or intellectual property alone. It is a much larger story. We may now be transitioning from an era of "owning things" to an era of "designing meaning."

And what does intellectual property look like in such an era? I do not have the answer yet. Therefore, I intend to pursue this question for a while longer.

© SHIRO & Co.

First published: 2026-05-31