AIM Global honors QR Code inventor for technology that powers everyday life
Masahiro Hara, chief engineer for DENSO WAVE Inc., has been awarded the prestigious AIM Global Lifetime Achievement Award. AIM is the world’s leading authority on innovation standards for Automatic Identification and Data Capture (AIDC) technologies.
Hara earned the 2025 award for inventing the QR Code, a registered trademark of DENSO, whose acronym stands for Quick Response and whose applications have become indispensable in daily life. Recognized globally, the symbol is a next-generation matrix code that stores a large volume of information and can be read swiftly and accurately.
Inexpensive and versatile, the QR code holds approximately 7,000 numerical characters, approximately 10 times the data capacity in a smaller space compared to a barcode. It also expresses information in Kanji, which a barcode cannot. Additionally, the QR Code’s features allow it to be read from any direction and self-correct for dirt, damage and other distortions, such as uneven or curved surfaces.
Introduced in 1994, the QR Code was quickly adopted by manufacturing and logistics companies for process and quality control, product shipping and inventory management. The food and pharmaceutical industries were also early adopters. After establishing the international standard, DENSO promoted the QR Code’s use by making it open-source technology.
Consumer use of the QR Code spread after cameras were added to mobile phones and proliferated with the emergence of smartphones. Today, common applications of the two-dimensional code include accounting, electronic transactions, ticketing, marketing, security control and workplace access.
Over the years, Hara improved on the original version by miniaturizing it to manage micro-sized products such as integrated circuits and adding security features that allow only devices with matching decoding software to read encrypted data. DENSO readers remain proprietary, closed-source technology.
Born in Tokyo, Hara studied electrical and electronic engineering at Hosei University before starting his career as an inventor at DENSO. Early on, he worked in product development of handheld barcode scanners and optical character recognition devices. The QR Code was born out of his desire to invent a superior version of the barcode in anticipation of a highly digitalized future.
The QR Code supports the Global Standards 1 (GS1) Sunrise 2027 initiative to meet the growing market demand for product packaging with more information on production, sourcing, supply chains, sustainability and other product details. DENSO WAVE continues to innovate and its products now include the rectangular QR Code, whose shape accommodates long, narrow spaces, and the Secure QR Code, which features closed-loop systems for anti-fraud protection.
The AIM Global Lifetime Achievement Award is given to an elite group of past and present AIM members whose careers have contributed to the advancement and widespread adoption of AIDC technologies across multiple industries. It is the latest in a series of coveted honors Hara has earned for inventing the QR Code. Hara received the Imperial Prize and Japan Academy Prize in 2023, the IEEE Corporate Innovation Award in 2022, the IEEE Milestone Award in 2020 and the European Inventor Award in 2014. In 2002, he was a recipient of the R&D 100s Awards.
