2022 Feb. 07 - Impact Innovation at Creatoyo 2022

encognize powers Creatoyo 2022 Business Innovation Award

In the first week of February 2022, the Global Innovation Studies Department of Toyo University in Japan has successfully delivered their annual flagship event, Creatoyo.
As every year, the event aimed at promoting creativity and innovation by gathering artists, academics, associations and business professionals and have them work in close collaboration with groups of students.

Based on the positive feedback received for the first Business Innovation Award delivered in 2021, encognize was invited to design and power the 2nd edition of the Creatoyo Business Innovation Award in a renewed online format.
This year, 3 teams of students have worked on creating a business concept and its related presentation, answering the question: "2025 - Impact Innovation: What societal problem will you solve as a for profit business entrepreneur?"
This theme directly aligns with encognize commitment to support the development of responsible X-Tech digital businesses.

For a rich experience, the 3 teams were coached by 3 startup founders coming each from different backgrounds and working on diverse social innovation-related solutions:

• Yu Shinagawa, Founder & CEO at An-Nahal, a startup offering services and programs aimed at increasing awareness around Diversity & Inclusion in Japan
• Masaki Ishibashi, Founder & CEO at Toyeight, a startup collaborating with Malaysian Top Universities to create an AI-based early childhood developmental assessment
• Cyrielle Thomas, a French founder based in Fukuoka and & CEO at Dokocha, a platform supporting the community of small Japanese Tea producers and  tea-related small businesses through Tea Tourism information, and Digitomenu, a service allowing restaurants to digitalize their menus and offer them in different languages for a better experience of non-Japanese speakers.

To help the 3 teams identify the type of impact they wanted to generate with their business, they were recommended to get inspired by one or several goals from the SDG framework.

As a result, each team has decided to address a specific challenge in different areas:

• the first team has proposed to improve the quality of education by creating a new type of platform with microlearning contents and recommendations that helps students keep engage and progress
• the second team has come up with an idea of "green coffee shops", listing coffee places with sustainable practices and offering services to help coffee places become more eco-friendly
• the third team has worked on removing the stigma related to consulting a therapist for mental health issues by proposing an app that helps raise self-awareness on one's mental health conditions and that can connect to therapist when necessary.

Each Team presentation was evaluated by a jury composed of Toyo University professors, the 3 coaches, encognize CEO and the students themselves based on 5 criteria:

1. Business Potential of the solution/service
2. Scale of Societal Impact of the solution/service
3. Level of uniqueness/innovation of the solution/service
4. Feasibility and Path to Delivery for the solution/service
5. Presentation quality

Congratulations to Team 3 (Yoana, Iana, Xinyue, Jundai) for winning the Creatoyo 2022 Business Innovation Award!

By joining the Creatoyo 2022 Business Innovation Award, the teams of students could:

1. experience the entrepreneurial journey from "inside" by thinking, acting, and behaving as entrepreneurs during the few weeks leading to the presentation day,
2. exchange and learn from diverse startup founders on innovation, creativity, launching a business, presentations...
3. directly leverage their learnings from their school year and from the Creatoyo week workshops,
4. learn how to present their business ideas in a sharp, concise and impactful way in front of a remote audience.

We would like to thank here Toyo University Professor Carraz, Imamura-sensei, the Coaches, Yu, Masaki and Cyrielle, the Creatoyo Coordination team and of course all the students for making this Creatoyo 2022 Business Innovation Award a successful and enjoyable experience!
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If you are interested in knowing more about the Creatoyo Business Innovation Award, do not hesitate to contact us here.