Accelerating R&D with Strategic Engineering Depth in Asia

In an exclusive interview with Thiruamuthan, Senior Correspondent at Asia Business Outlook, Shiro Yahara, President and CEO of Pioneer Corporation, discusses how engineering centers are achieving end-to-end autonomy, adopting platform thinking, and advancing AI-led automotive innovations to enable scalable, globally integrated, and future-ready product development. Shiro Yahara is a global business strategist and transformation leader with deep expertise in technology-driven industries. With decades of leadership across Pioneer, Air Liquide, and GE, he excels in scaling innovation, platform development, and cross-border organizational growth.

With Asia emerging as a serious contender in global innovation over R&D centers, moving beyond execution to actually lead product development strategy?

In the past, many companies established development centers purely for execution, while core product strategy and innovation were handled in other countries. Asian centers, including those in India, were primarily seen as support hubs rather than drivers of innovation. However, this approach is gradually changing.

India, in particular, is no longer viewed merely as a cost-effective talent pool. With growing recognition, it is now viewed as a crucial market with strong growth potential and a skilled talent pool, primarily specializing in software and technology. As a result, companies are now tapping into this talent not only to perform but also to usher in and shape the approach of global product development.

This shift is pushing R&D operations in India beyond their traditional roles. Indeed, now these centers have started to adopt global business strategies and are contributing to the shift from localized development models to globally integrated innovation frameworks. Given these developments, India is emerging as a global innovation hub, through its R&D capabilities shaping the future of technology and product development for multinational organizations.

As end-to-end ownership becomes the expectation, how are engineering teams in Asia managing complex design, validation, and release cycles with greater autonomy?

Nowadays, engineering teams in Asia are increasingly organized to handle the product development from design to release-to-end process. Many organizations are now building fully integrated teams that cover all crucial areas such as mechanical engineering, industrial design, electrical and embedded systems, hardware development and cloud and mobile application development. This shift reflects the growing maturity and autonomy of Asia-based centers in handling complex, cross-functional development cycles.

In some setups, such as ours, the approach goes beyond task execution. For example, in one of our product developments, the entire edge computing component was designed and built in India, while the cloud infrastructure was developed by teams in Japan. These components were later integrated into a unified solution. This reflects a broader trend in which companies strategically leverage regional strengths while maintaining global coherence.

Asian engineering centers today are becoming self-sufficient hubs, capable of independently managing the full product lifecycle. More importantly, there is a growing focus on scalable design and platform thinking. This enables modular, reusable architectures that support diverse regional and global product portfolios.

This evolution is not just about location-based execution — it represents a fundamental shift toward distributed innovation, where Asia-based teams are not only participating, but also influencing and shaping global product development strategy.

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The push for scalable design is growing. In this context, how are Asian engineering teams embedding platform thinking to enable modular development across regional and global portfolios?

One of the key challenges seen in markets like India is the need to cater to a wide product spectrum. It’s not just about offering low-end, extremely cost-effective platforms, be it for drive recorders or infotainment systems. The same market also demands high-end vehicles that require full-featured, premium solutions. Addressing this diverse requirement range is only possible through a platform-based design approach.

Without a platform mindset, companies end up creating individual solutions for each car model, which is not economically sustainable. That’s why the design thinking across many organizations is increasingly centered on scalable platform development. For example, we maintain an OEM platform in Japan, and our sound platform is designed to scale, from entry-level to high-end luxury vehicles. The same approach applies to infotainment systems as well.

While there is broad talent availability across Asia, the real challenge lies in developing deep technical expertise. In response, companies in the region are now building specialized skill pipelines to enhance engineering problem-solving capabilities. For instance, our teams include experienced senior professionals with strong domain knowledge in hardware design and quality processes, alongside a capable embedded design function.

At the same time, there’s an ongoing effort to bring in junior talent—new graduates and interns—to build future capabilities. This mix of experience and new-age skills is essential for adapting to evolving technologies and ensuring long-term capability development across engineering teams in Asia.

With vehicle interiors evolving into connected digital hubs, how are R&D centers building the engineering depth needed to integrate ADAS and infotainment seamlessly?

The focus in the automotive sector now is on better in-car experiences, mainly because of improvements in sound, vision, and AI technology. The way next-generation mobility will work is being formed by including this combination of immersive audio, intelligent vision sensors, and context-aware systems. Across Asia, engineering teams are taking the lead in developing these technologies, with a growing emphasis on software-driven innovation.

For instance, while sound technology expertise continues to be anchored in regions like Japan, vision systems and AI capabilities are increasingly being built out of India. Companies like Pioneer are combining these strengths to deliver integrated in-car experiences focused on comfort, safety, and driver support.

As cockpit systems evolve to become smarter and more interactive, the role of AI is expanding rapidly. Voice control has existed in vehicles for some time, though adoption has been limited. However, the emergence of generative AI, such as ChatGPT, is enabling more natural and human-like interactions between drivers and vehicles.

Looking at Pioneer for instance, it is developing its Piomatix platform to enable seamless multimodal interactions through sound, vision, screens, and touch. Such platforms rely heavily on AI to process contextual inputs and respond intelligently. This includes the use of both Edge AI and Cloud AI to support functions in vision sensors, digital signal processors, and advanced features like night vision cameras, all contributing to a more responsive, intuitive driving experience.