• TOP
  • News
  • Toyobo signs partnership contract with Plug and Play Japan in SmartCities domain

Toyobo signs partnership contract with Plug and Play Japan in SmartCities domain

Nov 02, 2020 Company

Download PDF ( 116KB )

Toyobo Co., Ltd. has signed a partnership contract on November 1 with Plug and Play Japan KK (“PnPJ”, hereafter), a major startup accelerator based in Tokyo, in the domain of SmartCities.*1 Under the partnership, Toyobo will exchange information about market demands for SmartCities and explore opportunities to collaborate with startups discovered and accelerated by PnPJ.

PnPJ was established in 2017 as a Japanese arm of Plug and Play, a top global venture capital/accelerator firm based in California, U.S. It has provided support to more than 400 startups in Japan and abroad. Plug and Play Osaka, a newly opened office in Osaka, in July this year, is tackling urban social issues, such as declining birthrate and rejuvenating urban infrastructure through accelerator programs*2 themed on SmartCities.

Under the vision of “continuously create the solutions needed by people and the earth with materials and science,” Toyobo is pursuing business development based on backcasting.*3 In 2019, Toyobo signed contract with U.S.-based Plug and Play to promote open innovation.*4 In this context, Toyobo believes SmartCities will be one of the solutions in the post COVID-19 era and decided to sign the partnership contract with PnPJ. Going forward, Toyobo will try to create new businesses that help materialize next-generation urban cities through collaboration with startups, which have synergistic effects with the company’s business domains, such as films/functional materials, mobility, lifestyle/environment and life science.

*1 Next-generation urban cities that provide comfortable and secure lifestyles by solving local problems with the use of state-of-the-art technologies
*2 An ad hoc program carried out for a certain period by a major corporation(s) and startup(s) for business collaboration or investment.
*3 A method that identifies possible social issues in the future and then works backward to establish strategies that bridge the future and the present.
*4 According to Toyobo’s press release dated April 15, 2019

For more information, contact

Public Relations Group, Corporate Sustainability Department, Toyobo Co., Ltd.

MAILpr_g@toyobo.jp

Cautionary Statement

This website contains forward-looking statements that reflect Toyobo's plans and expectations. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause Toyobo's actual results, performance, achievements or financial position to be materially different from any future results, performance, achievements or financial position expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements.