Activity Report
The Third Round of Societal Issue Discussions
Three rounds of Societal Issue Discussions were held to discuss issues and to report progress on research to ICF members. The first round was held on May 31 in the Wellness and Water & Food categories, and the second round on June 14 in the Energy & Environment and Mobility categories.
The third round was held on July 25 in the Education & Human Resource Development and Disaster Prevention & Infrastructure categories, and about 30 ICF members participated online and in person.
The first half focused on Education and Human Resource Development, and was led by an ICF Secretariat-provided overview of societal issues and how they are tackled. Following this, Meimi Moriya of the Work Shift Institute provided topics related to recurrent education, which participants then discussed in groups. The participants actively exchanged opinions about topics including their own awareness of the issues related to life-long learning.
In the second half of the event, the ICF Secretariat presented on societal issues in the Disaster Prevention and Infrastructure category, and Reiki Yoshimoto, a senior researcher at the Mitsubishi Research Institute, provided topics related to digital transformation for disaster prevention.
This was followed by group discussions where participants talked about the need for mental health care in times of disaster and about efforts to renovate local public facilities into evacuation centers.
Based on the three rounds of Societal Issue Discussions, the ICF Secretariat is updating The Listings of Societal Issues. It will be sent to ICF members around the end of September, and seminars will be held starting in October to explain the key points of the update.
BAP2023: Application Open to Startups (due August 22nd):
Questionnaire open to large companies and local governments to explore their needs for collaboration with startups (until August 25th)
The application for the ICF’s 9th business acceleration program, BAP 2023, is open until Tuesday, August 22.
Please consider applying for the program if you are a startup and have business ideas that can resolve societal issues. Vigorous preparations are underway so that even more co-creation projects will be born than last year.
For details on corporate-startup co-creation with MRI, please see this related article in Japanese, featuring interviews with ICF Secretariat members.
For large companies and local governments that are highly interested in co-creation with startups, BAP is in the early stages of creating projects that will encourage that kind of collaboration. Currently, the “Questionnaire about Collaboration with Startups ” (Japanese only) is open until Friday, August 25. If interested, please fill out the survey.
New Entrepreneurial Stories of Impactful ICF Members (#33, #34, and #35)
In order to tackle societal issues through business, entrepreneurs must have excellent interpersonal skills and strong organizational capabilities. What do they think and how are they trying to achieve the world they want?
The ICF has published a series of articles that sheds light on the personalities of entrepreneurs who are striving to resolve societal issues. The goal of these articles is to share with readers the philosophies of and the issues being tackled by these business founders, which in turn should lead to accelerated social breakthroughs in the future. The list of Japanese articles is here.
The new articles cover mirrorX Inc., a metaverse VR app provider; Qwi Inc., a personal authentication system provider; and salmontech inc., an ultrasonic diagnostic equipment developer.
The list of English articles is available here.
Interview Article
MRI and ICF are engaged in co-creation activities with startups. Interviews with MRI employees who are in charge of these co-creation activities have been published on the MRI website.
Please take a look at their passionate discussions about the DEMODAY held in March, examples of co-creation activities with ICF BAP participants, co-creation activities that take advantage of the strengths of working within a think tank, and future aspirations.
MRI and ICF will continue to engage in co-creation activities with diverse startups to resolve societal issues.
