Achieving new heights through open innovation
Since its establishment in 1918 as Japan’s first rayon manufacturer, the Teijin Group has ceaselessly transformed itself for over 100 years and has developed its business in three different areas: materials, healthcare and IT.
As part of Teijin’s commitment to open innovation to create new value, the company has launched the “TEIJIN Innovation Challenge for Sustainability and Well-being”, Teijin’s first global open innovation program, in collaboration with the French start-up company “Agorize”.
To know more about this program, click here
[LINK] (Link to external page)
The first steps of the program
The program was launched on September 13th 2021, calling on all global start-up companies, which could provide solutions in one of the three themes: Protecting the Environment, Safety, Security, and Disaster Mitigation, and Improving Healthcare for All, to participate. As a result, the program received 169 applications from 57 countries around the world, proving that the challenge was nothing short of a resounding success.
The categories Start-up company could apply in
The Teijin team were tasked with the difficult challenge of selecting only 30 start-up companies out of all the contestants, which they did by evaluating the solutions’ impact on social issues, competitive advantage/uniqueness, marketability/potential, synergy with Teijin and feasibility.
If you would like to learn more about the top 30 Start-up companies who were selected for the next round, click here
[LINK TO TOP 30 PAGE] (Link to external page)
What’s up next?
By January 18, 2022, up to eight finalist teams will be selected through the selection and evaluation phase. After that it will be the mentoring phase, Teijin members and the selected start-up companies will hold discussions on specific collaborations. In the last step, the final event will be hosted in early March, the collaboration proposals from each finalist start-up company will be reviewed and selected.
So stay tuned as you will be hearing more about this initiative and feel free to browse the program website for more information!
