3rd China Shenzhen Innovation & Entrepreneurship International Competition — Japan Regional Round

On Saturday 23 March 2019 the Japan Regional Round of the 3rd China Shenzhen Innovation & Entrepreneurship International Competition was held at the Shinagawa Prince Hotel in Takanawa, Tokyo. The round is the Japan leg of the international competition that Shenzhen runs around the world, and the Association promoted it as one of its key events, encouraging members and partners to take part.

Overview

• Date: Saturday 23 March 2019; registration from 11:00, start at 13:00
• Venue: Shinagawa Prince Hotel, 4-10-30 Takanawa, Minato-ku, Tokyo

Why it matters

The Japan round gives researchers, entrepreneurs and students in Japan a stage to present projects they hope to develop in Shenzhen. In earlier editions, teams from the Japan round won prizes at the finals in Shenzhen and went on to set up there. Since its founding, the Association has made support for the Japan round part of its mission, linking Japan's talent and technology with Shenzhen and encouraging project cooperation.

On the day

The round was organised by the Shenzhen Municipal Government, run by the Shenzhen Overseas High-Level Talent Liaison Office in Japan and hosted by Tian An Cyber City Group and Japan New Overseas Chinese News. About 150 guests attended, including Min Xiaobo, Deputy Director of the Shenzhen Human Resources and Social Security Bureau. Association President Jiang Feng moderated, reviewing the Japan teams' past results and this year's outreach.

• Guest speakers: Kan Suzuki, former Senior Vice Minister of Education and professor at the University of Tokyo and Keio University; and Min Xiaobo
• Judges: a seven-member panel including Tsuyoshi Kinoshita of the Internet Association Japan and Wu Tao, President of DJI Japan
• First prize: Wang Wensheng's team (a new non-volatile semiconductor memory for IoT)
• Second prizes: Chen Liangwen's team (industrial applications of extracellular matrix synthesis) and Mao Wei's team (a low-temperature conductive additive for lithium-ion batteries)
• Third prizes: Naotsugu Kubo's team from Japan (AC Biode), Chen Siyuan's team and Zheng Yinqiang's team
• Yu Zhirong, Chief Representative of the Shenzhen Economic and Trade Office in Japan, spoke at the awards ceremony

Since the launch in December 2018, ten information sessions had been held with the support of the All-Japan Chinese PhD Association, the All-Japan Chinese Association of Science and Technology and alumni groups at Tokyo Tech, Nagoya, Kyushu, Kyoto and Tohoku universities, plus a session at DJI Japan.

Results

At the 3rd International Competition in 2019, a team represented by Shi Hong (Tenji Information Systems), a participant in the Japan round, won third prize in the biotechnology and life-health industry final. At the participants' exchange meeting that the Association co-hosted that December, it was reported that across the four Japan rounds from 2016 to 2019, 36 teams had reached the finals and five projects had set up in Shenzhen.