Newly Established Open Innovation Platform which Opens the Door to All Companies

With each passing year, it is becoming increasingly difficult to encourage innovation by individual companies and organizations acting independently. This is driving a worldwide trend toward global open innovation, which aims at problem-solving based on collective wisdom from sources around the world. The Tsukuba Innovation Arena (TIA) was established in order to form a global nanotechnology research center to promote the industrialization of nanotechnology and human resources development in an integrated manner. This project brings together the capabilities of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), and the University of Tsukuba, all which are located in Tsukuba, Japan, and industry. As one of the Core Research Domains of this project, TIA Nano-Green aims to establish innovative material technology for environmental and energy, with nanotechnology and materials technology as its core.

To put this into practice, TIA Nano-Green has established a “platform” with a membership system for global open innovation which will flexibly provide collaboration in a variety of forms, responding to the desires of participating companies.

The most important feature of this open innovation platform is the fact that it opens the door to all companies which wish to participate. By continuing to search for research regions and themes which are more closely aligned with the needs of society through a dialogue with all companies which are participating and wish to participate, TIA Nano-Green aims to create innovative technologies in the environmental and energy materials regions which actively utilize nanotechnology. In particular, this work centers on the scientific research which is indispensable for realizing the next-generation technologies that hold the key to the future of Japan. In line with this, in operation of this newly established “platform,” TIA Nano-Green introduced new systems and frameworks, beginning with free-of-charge use of patents created by the platform and discount use of the equipment in the project’s “user facilities.”

Against this background, a contact for inquiries has been set in NIMS for interested companies, beginning with the workshop held today. In the coming months, TIA Nano-Green will continue to prepare the necessary systems for a full-scale start of research activities in April 2012, while also feeding back the opinions of companies which wish to participate so as to appropriately reflect their thinking.

Companies which are involved in environmental and energy technology development and are considering participation in this new open innovation-type research may inquire at the following contact:

Tsukuba Innovation Arena Promotion Office
NIMS
TEL: +81-29-859-2102
E-Mail: tia=nims.go.jp
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