Lecture by Global Co-Creation consultant Chie Sato

Chie Sato, who was visiting UJICY, gave a lecture in the auditorium on the first floor of UJICY, titled “Era of Innovation with Society and The World: Why, What, and How”.In the lecture, she mainly touched on the following five topics. In this article, we will briefly introduce the content of the lecture.

- What is innovation? What is the difference between creativity and innovation?
Creativity is a process, and innovation is the creation of value.

- Why is this an era of innovation in society and the world?
It is important to check the situation in society and the world not only by GDP, but also by OECD's well-being and progress indicators. And, due to globalization, innovation is no longer something that affects only one country, but has a broad impact on the world.

- What should we think about and do in order to innovate?
We should deepen our understanding of the position of our counterparts and our own position, and then assume areas where we can collaborate.

- What does it mean to prepare a “Ba” for co-creation?
In Japan, the word “Ba” refers to a place and opportunity, and we need to create a “Ba” where knowledge creation can happen. For example, there are ways to create a place and opportunity, such as living labs, associations, dialogues and meet-ups. 

- Case studies of institutions that are promoting innovation (examples from Japan, Finland and Singapore)
In the case of Japan, the example of IMS (Institute for Multidisciplinary Science) at Yokohama National University was introduced. Yokohama National University has an interdisciplinary research center, IMS, which is vision-driven and promotes interdisciplinary research. For example, this center has a unique research team that is researching typhoons from an interdisciplinary perspective, such as disaster prevention and psychology. In addition to research centers, Japan also has testing centers that are open to the public, and they are also supporting innovation.

The lecture covered everything from the concept of innovation to specific examples, and even those who were not familiar with innovation were able to understand the overall picture of innovation.
Through this lecture, we at UJICY would like to think together with the researchers about how we can provide value to society and the world, using examples from around the world as a starting point.

【Chie Sato's profile】
Chie Sato is an international co-creation consultant who supports value creation on a global stage. She has been involved in projects to promote the social deployment of research and technology, industrial development, and corporate management improvement not only in Japan, but also in Europe, the United States, Asia, and Africa. She has also been involved in supporting social partnerships and co-creation strategy development in the higher education sector for over 20 years, and has been working on the development of co-creation human resources. She obtained an MSc in structural engineering from Waseda University. And she started a part-time research position, as a visiting professor at the Institute for Multidisciplinary Science of Yokohama National University, focusing on combination of hard technology and soft social communication for disaster resilience.