Mr. Tomotaka Goji, Managing Partner of UTEC, participated in the elite Panel Discussion on the theme - "A search for Unicorns and the building of SOCIETY 5.0 " - held by Reuters on behalf of the Japan Prime Minister's Office, at the prestigious Davos Summit.
The Davos Summit (23rd Jan 2018 -26th Jan 2018) was organized by the World Economic Forum. It was organized at a health resort in the Eastern part of Switzerland. The aforementioned panel came together on January 24th to discuss various issues related to the theme - "A search for Unicorns and the building of SOCIETY5.0".  The year 2018 marked the 48th convention of the World Economic Forum annual general meeting.
Please refer to the following link for the event overview:
https://www.reuters.com/brandfeatures/staging/davos-society5.0
The esteemed panel comprised of the who’s who of the startup world, namely, Sharron Barrow (General Secretary, International Trade Union Confederation and WEF co-chair), Navin Chaddha (Managing Director, Mayfield, Jerown Tas (entrepreneur and Chief Innovation Officer, Phillips) along with Mr. Goji. The panel had an insightful discussion for around 40 minutes on the fourth Industrial revolution and its impact on the society and creation of Society 5.0, and the role of different startup ecosystems in this regard.
Mr. Tomotaka Goji, highlighted that the US and Chinese startups are playing a different game compared to their counterparts in Japan as Japanese startups are based on profound technology. He stated that the world needs more technology-based unicorns rather than just the consumer-oriented ones. By elucidating the case of UTEC’s portfolio Mujin, a robotics startup tackling the problem of labor-shortage, Goji pointed out that Japanese startups backed by strong scientific foundations tend to solve the problems on a fundamental level, and thus they tend to be more successful in creating a societal impact. When asked on by the moderator on why Japan is a great place to do innovation related to AI and Robotics, Goji candidly noted that Japanese people tend to have positive attitude towards AI and robots because of the influence of fiction and manga.
The full discussion can be found at https://www.reuters.tv/l/f31.
On the evening of January 24th, a networking event by the name of "Japan Night” was held with a theme "linking Japan to the world". "The Japan Times" interview of Goji was handed out to all the participants of the event.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/01/23/business/japan-frontrunner-solve-social-challenges/#.W07X5H59hQL