Kaoru Mokunaka

" . . . The X1 concept was actually conceived and spearheaded by Kaoru Mokunaka, a former member of Panasonic, who decided to join the Leica Product Management team in 2007 for the compact cameras. In a way he was more German than us, able to see the project from the outside and to arrive at the right mixture of performance and form factors. His philosophy: Make the camera as compact as possible with the biggest available sensor, and make it a real Leica.”

Source - Stefan Daniel