While several projects have shown some strong progress in Q1, we have decided to feature two of them in this brief post, as a representation of the breadth and depth of services our encognize X-Tech Force provides to our business partners.

First, ELLA, the EdTech Adaptive Learning-as-a-Service API tool co-sponsored by encognize through its digital service launchpad, 「lab4-203」, has successfully graduated from the incubator Social Change Maker 5, a program sponsored by the Nippon Foundation and powered by ImpacTech. This would not have been possible without the support and hard work of ELLA's global Ambassador, Nhi Duong, and ELLA's co-founder, Eric Wiel. As a next step, leveraging the learning from the incubator program and inputs from the various mentors, ELLA's team will engage further with elearning and mobile learning solution providers.

Second, as part of its 「wisdomseed」 service line, encognize has continued their effort supporting innovative companies grow their business by providing custom upskilling sessions to a successful Japanese startup in the consumer electronics sector. The goal of the sessions is to help the company CEO prepare the scaling-up of his company in terms of business and organization and maximize his chance of success by equipping him with the right management and leadership tools and practices.

As far as Q2 is concerned, the encognize X-Tech Force will of course keep all its focus on delivering quality results to its business partners for the various missions it has been entrusted with.

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.

Who said that the COVID19 pandemic would stop cross-border innovation initiatives?
Certainly not our encognize GK Japan X-Tech Force who has been supporting both inbound and outbound business development initiatives for a large variety of digital tech innovators throughout 2021!

Supporting B2B Startups and scale-ups in FinTech, HealthTech, MedTech, AgriTech, Drones and Photogrammetry platform, Robotics Orchestration platform, EdTech, MarTech, RetailTech, not to mention the co-launch of ELLA, an EdTech microSaaS offering Adaptive Learning-as-a-Service API to eLearning / mLearning designers were all part of our 2021 menu...
And the 2022 menu looks as exciting as 2021, if not more!

Thank you to all our business partners for trusting us this year again in delivering their innovation-related initiatives.
We look forward to further fruitful collaborations on innovation in this year of the Tiger!

Bruno
encognize G.K., Founder & CEO