September 10, 2020
Tokyo, September 10, 2020 – NEC Corporation (NEC; TSE: 6701), OBAYASHI CORPORATION, Japan Industrial Partners, Inc., Japan Investment Adviser Co., Ltd. ITOCHU Techno-Solutions Corporation and AOI Fund 1, operated by UTokyo Innovation Platform Co., Ltd., today announced the establishment of BIRD INITIATIVE, Inc. (BIRD), a new company that will create new businesses from collaborative R&D among businesses, financial companies and academia, and will begin operations in October.
In recent years, the importance of research and development for speeding up problem solving has been increasing as the issues facing society and organizations have become more and more complex with the advance of digitalization and the acceleration of social change. Under such circumstances, BIRD, representing a combination of Business Innovation powered by R&D, aims to promote a new research and development framework called “Co-creative R&D” in which issues and technologies are brought together from industry, government and academia.
At the start of a project, BIRD uses advanced AI technologies (Intelligent Simulation and Automation) obtained through the AI research collaboration between the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology and the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research and NEC to clarify any issues that customers experience in relation to applied research and development. In addition, BIRD provides consulting services to help clients solve the challenges they have identified, and to prototype development services to prepare a research and development environment for testing.
Through these services, BIRD establishes a research theme, forms a research team, conducts research and development, and prepares for commercialization, in order to achieve the fastest possible solution for an issue and to create a new business.
For details, please refer to NEC Corporation’s website.
