The annual international conference “Hack Osaka” is a poster event for the City of Osaka, which prides itself as an open innovation city. For the event’s 7th occurrence, Hack Osaka will center on the theme of “Realizing an Innovation Ecosystem ― Paradigm Shift Toward Hack Osaka Movement”. We will learn from successful examples in the world on how to make Hack Osaka Movement generate innovations one after another with participation of various players who play main roles in ecosystem, including entrepreneurs, investors, large companies, and students.
In addition, we aim to expand our global innovation network, as well as cultivatestimulate entrepreneurship among the younger generation by sharing outstanding episodes of globally active young entrepreneurs branching upon Osaka Innovation Hub, or from abroad.
* The speaker might be changed.
As Founder & CEO of SKYAH Co., Ltd., she imports and promotes sales of items produced by MY DREAM. org., an NGO which executes both social-return and income-generation activities in Northern Ghana. At SKYAH she also provides consultancy and agent services for Japanese companies and NGOs wishing to expand footprints into Africa and African companies wishing to do business in/with Japan, while giving lectures for children to promote mutual understanding between Japan and Africa.
In the past, she worked as a diplomat at Embassy of Japan to Ghana and as a manager of African Strategy & Promotion Department at Mitsui & Co. Europe Plc.
Interviewed by Forbes Japan/ Title of the article: “Yukari Hara －Former Japanese diplomat, assisting a village in Ghana through holistic approaches.”
Rockstart Founder Oscar Kneppers is a successful serial entrepreneur and a celebrated internet publisher – launching several media focused on innovation and technology. After selling his media businesses (Emerce in 2001 and Bright in 2008) Oscar founded Rockstart in 2011. Rockstart, ‘The Global Startup Machine’, helps startups be more successful in their first 1,000 days through funding and mentorship (Rockstart Accelerator), community and office space (Rockstart Spaces) and startup events (Rockstart Answers) in many cities across the globe.
Oscar comes from a large family, is married, has two children and lives in Amsterdam.
Christina is the Chief Community Builder of Startup Asia Women Community established to provide resource and support to women running / working at / planning to start startups. Christina also founded Want Things Done, a freelance concierge platform to match freelancers with business who need help with getting things done. Further she has been appointed the Singapore Director of the only global maritime accelerator, PortXL, headquartered in Rotterdam.
Christina brings with her more than 22 years of corporate senior management experience in Acer, IBM, DEC, 3COM, O2, Yahoo!, HKCSL. She was the first GM of Yahoo! Singapore and launched the first windows smartphone, branded O2, in Asia Pacific. Christina is well-travelled, global and cultural savvy with a strong business and marketing acumen. Currently she is totally immersed in the startup eco-system.
Pedro Viçoso Fazenda is a professor in the Electronics, Telecommunications and Computer Engineering Department at Instituto Superior de Engenharia de Lisboa (ISEL). He graduated with honors from ISEL and concluded his masters in Robotics and Control at the Institute for Systems and Robotics at Instituto Superior Técnico (IST). He concluded with distinction his PhD in Sustainable Energy Systems, working with smart buildings at the MIT Portugal Programe. During his PhD he worked with his co-adviser Dr. Una-May O’Reilly, in the ALFA Group, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), in modeling and optimization algorithms for smart buildings. Currently he is the co-founder and CTO of ETConcept, a company that provides engineering services that is currently involved in an OrganiCity smart city project for the city of Lisbon. He also co-founded with his wife Yvonne Weber, Fazenda & Weber, a company that invests and manages real-estate. In his spare time he enjoys sailing with his wife, while managing a sailing association in Oeiras, Lisbon.
Chris Kommatas is currently the Head of Innovation and Strategic Partnerships at the Health Round Table, and is the co-founder and Director of the Melbourne Health Accelerator at the The Royal Melbourne Hospital. He is also the founder of Australia’s largest early-stage healthtech startup community, Startup HealthTech.
Chris’ former life included clinical roles in physical medicine and rehabilitation at major medical centres and primary care settings in his native New York City. His extensive commercial experience includes over 20 years in pharmaceutical and medical technology leadership roles with global companies such as GSK, Merck, Hospira (now Pfizer) and ConvaTec in the US, UK and across Asia Pacific.
Chris’ entrepreneurial journey began in 2013, with a venture in building Melbourne’s emerging digital health sector.
Sushi Suzuki is a specially appointed associate professor at the Kyoto Institute of Technology and KYOTO Design Lab where he runs ME310/SUGAR, a nine month innovation program utilizing the principles of design thinking. The program originated in Stanford University and expanded globally, and leading companies around the world collaborate with students from over a dozen countries. Sushi is also the founder of Kyoto Startup Summer School, Japan's most intense entrepreneurship program conducted fully in English.
Previously, he co-founded Paris Est d.school while teaching design innovation at École des Ponts ParisTech and was the Executive Director of the ME310 program at Stanford University. Sushi also set up an innovation team for Panasonic Europe, was one of the co-founding members of i-kimono.com, a Japanese start-up company that handles antique kimono and accessories online, and a concept developer for Yocondo, a Germany-based semantic product search engine.
Sushi was born in Kyoto, Japan but spent over fifteen years in the US and over five in Europe, and has traveled to over sixty countries. He holds a M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and B.A. in Studio Arts from Rice University.
Artist by nature, Engineer by training, and Designer by desire, Sushi is always thinking of new ways to do the old things better.
Mr. Yoshikawa was appointed the head of Osaka Innovation Hub, Osaka city’s networking platform for innovation, and was engaged in administering innovation for the city. Before this, he had developed and managed new businesses as a company intrapreneur and has made a lot of alliances with many companies and research institutes, including startups overseas. He has experience planning and operating cross-organizational projects to benefit all stakeholders in their industries.
Based on his past experience, when people see their companies changing rapidly along with the market, they are likely to think of themselves as contributors to their town or industry. While working for the Osaka city government, he promoted “Hack Osaka,” a campaign to make the entire city into a workplace where all players can work together to co-create. This is beyond position, title, organization, and nationality.
He is working as adviser for Hankyu Hanshin Properties Corp., Osaka International Business Promotion Center as well as several startups.
He was elected one of Forbes Japan’s 88 local innovators in 2017.
- Mr. Allen Miner (Chairman & CEO of SunBridge)
- Mr. Oscar Kneppers (Founder of Rockstart)
- Ms. Christina Teo (Chief Builder, she1K and WantThingsDone)
- Mr. Christopher Kommatas (Head of Innovation & Strategic Partnerships, The Health Round Table Co-founder, Melbourne Health Accelerator)
Mr. Nakano was born in December, 1978 (39 years old) and graduated from Chukyo University School of Business Administration in 2001.
In 2012 he acquired Master of Business Administration (MBA) at GLOBIS School of Business Administration, majoring in Management Strategy, Human Resources Strategy, and Finance.
He would go on to focus on planning and sales of recruitment advertising (job change portal “DODA”, part-time job portal “an”) under Intelligence Inc. for 10 years, gaining exposure to the entire recruitment market spectrum, from the perspective of small companies to corporations listed on the 1st section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. He also has 5 years of experience as an interviewer for Intelligence Inc.’s recruitments, and as instructor/mentor for fresh recruits in the company.
In April 2012 he would establish i-plug Co., Ltd, operating the proactive-recruitment portal service “OfferBox” which would since then benefit over 270,000 graduates and 4160 companies.
Born in 1984, Mr. Kanaya is the founder and CEO of akippa Inc.
Founded in 2009, his company has been providing the parking space sharing service “akippa” since 2014, and the service would be broadcasted under the spotlight of the business documentary “Dawn of Gaia” in 2015.
In December of 2016, the company would first gain funding from a partnership with Toyota Motor Corporation, and would later receive 2.4 billion yen of capital investments from Japan Post Holdings Capital and GLOBIS etc.
Mr. Kanaya is elected as one of “100 people who will create the next generation, 2017” by Nikkei Business, alongside Shohei Otani of MLB’s L.A. Angeles and Masayoshi Son, Softbank’s president.
In 2005 Jun Tarikino established Value Management Co., Ltd. and assumed the post of Representative Director. The company restores operation to cultural assets such as traditional buildings and idle government facilities, and rejuvenated facilities such as hotels, traditional inns and wedding venues. The company works under the theme of “Linking the rejuvenation of facilities to regional revitalization, gathering the threads of culture unique to Japan.”, former Chairperson of EO Osaka chapter of the global Entrepreneurs’ Organization, vice chairperson of Opera, chairperson of the Next Generation Bridal Council bridal industry revitalization organization and member of the Public-Private Partnership Promotion Team for Community Tourism Development by Leveraging Historical Resources.
Kentaro Suda was born in Kuala Lumpur in 1985 to a Japanese father and a Malaysian-Chinese mother. He spent his childhood in Malaysia and Jakarta, Indonesia until he moved to Osaka at the age of 10. Despite entering the college, a chain of his thoughts at the Coming of Age ceremony led him to envisage to achieve “something world-class” in his life and decide to drop out of the college. At the age of 22, he founded the company, FREEPLUS. In 2010, FREEPLUS started Japan’s inbound travel business. In 2017, FREEPLUS started a hotel business mainly targeting foreign tourists.
Building upon the past line-up of “Digital Health”, “Travel Tech”, and “Smart City”, this year we are adding “Sports Tech” and “Food Tech” to the themes covered in our entrepreneurial idea & business model competition, the Business Plan Contest. Participating companies should be in their seed or early stage, and operate IT-related businesses dealing with products or services in any of the fields including the Internet of Things, the Internet, mobile technologies, software, digital content, or consumer electronics (including PDA and robots).
*We will be taking photos and videos for public relations purposes after the event, and there may be possible interviews. by the press. Please be advised that application to the event will imply consent to the possibility of appearing in the aforementioned photos and videos. Personal information provided to the event shall only be used within the scope of the purposes stipulated in advance, and shall not be provided to any third parties without prior notice.
Congress Convention Hall A,
Rooms 1 - 3
(Granfront Osaka
Knowledge Capital B 2 Level)
Coming Soon
Theme: Realizing an Innovation Ecosystem －Paradigm Shift Toward Hack Osaka Movement－
Date: March 13 (Wed.), 2019
Theme: Power to Connect and Get Connected Produces Serendipity －Give Before You Get －
Date: February 27 (Tue.), 2018
Theme: The Power of Design for Innovative Culture―
Date: Feb. 9 (Thur.), 2017
Theme: Go Forward Strongly to Innovation
Date: Feb. 17 (Wed.), 2016
Theme: How to be unique and to develop Original Innovation Ecosystem and startups
Date: Feb. 10 (Tue.), 2015
Theme: Future that IoT can bring
Date: Feb. 19 (Wed.), 2014
Theme: Innovations in the world
Date: Feb.14 (Thur.), 2013
*We will take photos and videos so as to disseminate information after the event, and may undertake media interviews. Please agree to the possibility of participants’ appearance in these photos and videos. Personal information provided to the event is used only within the scope of the purposes stipulated in advance, and is not provided to others. Please note that the Hack Osaka 2019 Planning Committee (Osaka City and Urban Innovative Institute), which plans and implements this project, and Osaka Urban Industry Promotion Center, which is in charge of disseminating information, share personal information handled for the event.
* The privacy policy of Osaka Urban Industry Promotion Center is here.
