Students rounded up start-ups in the Hokkaido Innovation Week

Endowed with rich local resources, Hokkaido has great potential to foster a healthy business ecosystem. Such a view is also shared among some Hokkaido University personnel, including students. With Hokkaido Innovation Week (HIW), Hokkaido University’s students and staff members sought to unveil this regional potential through activities held from the last week of January to early February, bringing together budding and established entrepreneurs.

The final pitch competition night of The Northern Challenge held in Deep Tech Core, Sapporo, on January 30, 2024.

HIW is a project organized by an international team consisting of many people of different professional backgrounds and skills. This diversity produced events taking place in different cities across Hokkaido, but the core events took place mainly in the prefectural capital, Sapporo. Hokkaido University’s Institute for the Promotion of Business-Regional Collaboration was one of the organizing entities. Hokkaido University students also managed some student-led events.

HIW’s Student Event Lead, Taiga Haguro (School of Engineering, B2), said that HIW desires to encourage Hokkaido’s budding start-up culture, and their target is not limited to students. “Last year, some representatives from Hokkaido University went to a start-up community gathering called Tech BBQ in Denmark. We thought that it would be great to have that kind of platform that is locally initiated, for the most part, but is open to anyone from anywhere.”

One of HIW’s core events is The Northern Challenge, planned and managed by a student organization—the majority of which are Hokkaido University students—called Hokkaido Unique Base (HUB). Supported by start-up and tech companies, HUB organized hackathons allowing the participants to refine their ideas and build prototypes.

A business-pitch session of The Northern Challenge

Lumina Suzuki (School of Agriculture) is a second-year Hokkaido University student who, together with her team called Tocha, came up with the idea of connecting older women through technology. This concept brought them up to The Northern Challenge’s final pitch session and for which they received the “Future Entrepreneurship Award” of the final pitch night.

This was Suzuki’s first time coming up with and presenting a start-up idea. “From this experience, I tested and pushed my limits. Start-up creation, although it is tiring when I try to balance it with my academic life, is interesting to me because I can decide myself what to make and to do,” said Suzuki.

Tsutomu Nagahama from Tohoku University Venture Partners (far right, holding the microphone) announced team Tocha as the awardee for the “Future Entrepreneurship Award”

Unlike most constituent events of HIW, the Hult Prize on Campus Competition at Hokkaido University (HP@HU) is a long-running, student start-up competition held every year. This year’s competition, the ninth annual competition is special for being an integral component of the HIW.

Every year the competing students are challenged to come up with changemaking venture concepts based on a theme decided by the Hult Prize committee. While in the previous years the theme correlated to specific United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); this year, the committee designated a less restraining theme: “Unlimited.” Around 40 students in HP@HU took up this challenge.

The first place was bestowed on team NourishINA, whose initiative plans are to tackle nutritional issues among children. One team member, Ilham Maulidin (Graduate School of Engineering, M2) greatly appreciated the mentorship provided by HP@HU’s incubation program which preceded the competition event. In regard to student-led entrepreneurship, he commented, “Students inherently have a high level of curiosity, so I think that having the opportunity to develop and realize that curiosity is important. We can also show that students are able to contribute to society.”

Team NourishINA with the judges, HP@HU committee, and guests. The team received ¥200,000 business seed funding as the on-campus competition’s first-place prize.

Some other main and side-events of HIW managed by Hokkaido University members also garnered attention from interested parties. Hakodate Startup Days was held by Hokkaido University’s Institute for the Promotion of Business-Regional Collaboration in Hakodate City. A Hokkaido University student business start-up team, Beeber Global, hosted two intercultural activities for networking on Sapporo campus: an art workshop and a gala dinner celebrating Indian Republic Day.

Regardless of the format, all events and activities highly prize connections. In HIW, people across nationalities and backgrounds met in this large-scale networking platform to mutually share experiences for their benefit as individuals and as business entities.