"What Higher Education-related problem can you solve using digital technologies, turning your solution into a responsible business by 2025?"

This is the question that participants of Creatoyo 2021, an annual one-week interactive event organized by the Department of Global Innovation Studies (GINOS) Toyo University Japan, in collaboration with MOSAIC, the creativity and innovation hub from HEC Montreal, Canada and BETA from Strasbourg University, had to work on in a team setup.

For this Creatoyo 2021 Business Innovation Award program fully designed and delivered on-line by encognize, the 5 teams competing for the award could get expert insights and learn from professionals drawn from the entire innovation ecosystem in Japan (Corporations, startups support structure, coach, VC...).

Knowledge sharing sessions from the selected Business Innovation Award mentors covered themes such as how to define your market, the importance of developing soft skills, design thinking and related tools, PR/FAQ innovation mechanism, the role of VC and key criteria for a VC investment decision.

Our encognize Japan X-Tech Force has continued without any interruption (yet remotely) their business development efforts on FinTech and InsurTech X HealthTech related solutions from their existing business partners portfolio.
Additionally, encognize has engaged in new, diverse digital innovation-focused activities over Q3:

• .synaptik service: encognize, a Service Partner of Plug And Play Japan, was privileged to be invited to join the PnP Japan Fall Summit 2020 as guest contributor on September 28, Expo Day 1, and to discuss the presentations with the Brand & Retail APAC/Europe program participants for the benefit of the Expo audience.
• .fastforward service: on July 16, encognize announced its collaboration with FACIL'iti, a French-Japanese company offering a secure, cost-efficient, non-invasive and privacy compliant solution that helps make the web more inclusive.
• .lab4-203 service: as part of an EdTech project aimed at improving the learning of foreign languages on-line or with an app through the use of adaptive learning techniques, a first functional prototype of ELLA (E.nhanced L.earning L.evel A.lgorithm) has been released. The prototype is now being tested by a group of pre-selected learners in order to calibrate the adaptive learning recommendation engine.
• .fastforward service: through the whole quarter, part of our encognize Japan X-Tech Force has been involved in the facilitation and delivery support of a project based on advanced PII data protection solutions.

From direct and indirect contributions to the delivery of educational sessions as part of encognize .SYNAPTIK services to expending our support to innovative startups entering the Japanese market under encognize .FASTFORWARD services, the first quarter of 2020 has been very active for our Japan X-tech Force consultants.

• January 17: workshop on the topic of collaboration gap between corporations and startups delivered to the Department of Global Innovation Studies of Toyo University for the Creatoyo week
• January 20: presentation of the IRTA x Protiviti global study "An Urgent Call for KYC Optimization", realized with encognize direct contribution, at the second gathering of the SupTech/RegTech Committee of the FinTech Association Japan (FAJ), with the active participation of Kito-san (FAJ & Crowd Realty KK), Higo-san (FAJ & TRUSTDOCK KK), Homma-san (FINANTIX GK) and Ogawa-san (EY Japan)
• February: onboarding of Optimity with a mission to support their ongoing projects in Japan as well as to accelerate their domestic business growth. Optimity is a comprehensive health solution focused on proactive wellness for individual users and business-enabler for corporations especially in the Insurance industry
• March 02: participation to the preparation and delivery of an event from La French Tech Tokyo featuring the most promising French startups known as NEXT40, with the support of the French Embassy in Tokyo, including live presentation from the NEXT40 companies already operating in Japan
• March 26:  support to the final FE Credit Vietnam Xcelerate Demo Day remote presentation of AdviceRobo, one of the only 10 startups selected to this program developed in partnership with MEDICI.
• March: encognize becomes an official Service Partner of Plug and Play Japan. As Service Partner of Plug and Play Japan, encognize commits to support the domestic business development of the selected startups selected by offering a Japan Market Entry seminar and preferential service pricing.

Additionally, under the global COVID-19 sanitary crisis, encognize has decided to put in place specific "Japan Business Continuity" packages to support startups or scale-ups with no/limited operational teams in Japan and in the need of Japanese-speaking Business Coordinators to help manage ongoing discussions or project during lockdown and travel restrictions. Contact us here for more information and we will check how we can help your business move forward in Japan despite the adversarial context.