Technology is a wonderful thing; the world’s greatest advancements and shifts can be attributed to the discovery of new technology or exploring new uses for existing ones.
But sometimes, there is a disconnect between the technology that already exists and the technology that is accessible to us. Cleantech in general, for example, spent decades alternating between boom and bust.
There are reasons for that of course. Sometimes, the development cycles are too long, or the technology is highly specialised, or it requires significant capital and resources.
This is where Leave a Nest comes in.
Closing the gap to create real-world solutions
Leave a Nest was founded in Japan in 2002 by 15 graduate students who are aiming to solve three challenges: the waning interest in Science of middle and high school students, the employment gap for highly educated graduates, and the lack of technology flow into the community.
With the vision of “Advancing Science and Technology for Global Happiness”, Leave a Nest is helping bridge the gap between university knowledge and societal needs. They have established themselves as a knowledge platform by building and nurturing a network of innovators developing cutting-edge technology.
But what good is technology if its potential to solve the world’s problems isn’t realised?
This is precisely the gap that Leave a Nest aims to close; taking innovation borne out of research and study and not only making it accessible but also impactful to society. They call this ideology “Science Bridge Communication”, wherein they not only build and nurture solutions to the world’s challenges not limited to innovation and technology, and bring these solutions out to where they are most needed.
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They do this through various partnerships and projects that take new or existing ideas and technologies to further develop them into a product that is useful and accessible. Through initiatives like their Frontier Development project, they engage a wide network of people and organisations such as early-stage startups, research institutes, universities, and even small factories to support prototyping in the creation of new technologies.
They then would engage financial investors and large companies seeking partnerships with innovators to be able to implement or commercialise these technologies.
Leave a Nest has worked on projects with a number of startups resulting in various successes, and they continue to work with more across several countries.
Partnerships like the recent Enter to Japan Market initiative with Enterprise Singapore allows Leave a Nest to create opportunities for Singapore startups to collaborate with various Japanese companies for product development and expansion opportunities.
“Within a short span of 5 days, we met 20+ large-scale corporations, VCs, and government entities during our physical visit to Tokyo,” said Dr. Kush Agarwal, Founder and CEO of WaveScan Technologies, who participated in Enter to Japan Market. “The program was very well-structured to the personal needs and priorities of startups. Leave a Nest has continued to support us even after the GIA program.”
Not just a connector but a partner for innovation
Innovation and change tend to come slowly for most large companies that dominate various industries, despite having huge amounts of resources and valuable connections. Innovation requires a company to take a certain amount of risk by exploring new processes, technologies, and even entirely new business models. Oftentimes, large corporations have difficulty trying to fit innovation into their current structure.
Through Leave a Nest, large corporations looking to accelerate their innovation strategy can get connected with potential partners that can help them explore and integrate new technologies and solutions into their current structure.
An added value is that Leave a Nest is headquartered in Japan, which ranked 13th in the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Global Innovation Index 2021. This means that collaborating with Leave a Nest gives companies based elsewhere access to some of the newest technologies being developed in the country, with the added benefit of having support in navigating language, culture, and network challenges that most companies face in the Japan ecosystem.
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But Leave a Nest’s hands-on approach does not end with making connections. They are looking for companies to partner with, who have the same vision of solving the world’s problems and working together with them to create solutions to these problems.
They call this process knowledge manufacturing, wherein they work with companies to explore and develop new technologies based on the problems they are aiming to solve, and building a way to make these new technologies available as positive impact business opportunities.
For example, Leave a Nest recently made the announcement of the launch of a new product by CRUST Group, which will be available in the Japanese market. CRUST Group, a company aiming to address food waste issues, worked with Leave a Nest and collaborated with various Japanese food service companies, to develop a pale ale made from surplus bread.
Such examples underscore what makes Leave a Nest stand out — that the value they provide their partners go beyond simple checklists of what needs to be done. Partnering with Leave a Nest means having access to a vast source of knowledge and technology, geared toward the creation of business opportunities based on their partners’ specific goals.
For companies who collaborate with Leave a Nest, this means being able to fill in the missing parts of their innovation strategy with the best that academe and an ecosystem of innovators can offer.
On the other side of the coin, large corporations with existing technologies can also benefit from partnering with Leave a Nest. With this access to a knowledge network, they can collaborate with the right partners to expand the use of their existing technology in entirely new and impactful ways.
Collaborate with Leave a Nest
Since being founded, Leave a Nest has established a presence in six countries, working with over 300 partners and clients, and nurturing over 2,000 teams across Southeast Asia and Japan, resulting in the creation of over 200 projects per year.
Join their upcoming event TECH VENTURE Meetup in 2021 happening on 18th December and register here.
For more information on how Leave a Nest can help add value to your company, visit their website or enquire at info-asia@lne.st
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Photo by Daniel Frank from Pexels
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This article is produced by the e27 team, sponsored by Leave a Nest
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