On April 7 and April 8, 2016, the Japan Association of New Economy (JANE) held its annual New Economy Summit (NEST) at the Hotel New Otani in Tokyo.
The event opened with a startup pitch contest with esteemed VCs from Silicon Valley as judges. Panels included topics such as Fintech, Japan's Startup scene, innovation in India, medical innovation, drones, the sharing economy, philanthropy, and others. Keynotes included the Prime Minister of Estonia, which has a remarkably advanced implementation of Information Technology (IT) in government, and a talk by Andy Rubin, who invented the Android operating system which was bought by Google, focusing on his new robotics project.
Videos of the sessions will be uploaded to the NEST website when available.
and the program and list of speakers can be found here: http://nest.jane.or.jp/en/program/
SV-NJ participated in NEST with Kenji Kushida as part of the planning committee. He moderated the panel on medical innovation with the aim of going beyond the incredible innovations in medical fields themselves to make links to Silicon Valley, Japan's new regulatory framework for regenerative medicine, and extend the discussion to Japan's brain circulation. He invited: Keita Mori, founder of San Bio, which began in Silicon Valley but moved to Japan when the regulatory framework for regenerative medicine in Japan allowed for the shortest time to market in a 2015 revision of the Pharmaceutical Law; Tadahisa Kagimoto, founder of Healios; and Hiroshi Mikitani invited Hisataka Kobayashi, a scientist at the US National Institute of Health, who is undertaking breakthrough research and commercializing it through a startup supported by Mr. Mikitani.
More pictures of NEST available on the JANE Facebook page as well.
