In recent years, the globalization of business has progressed and the overseas expansion of Japanese companies has been increasing year by year. As a result, traveling overseas for business negotiations and assignments, as well as training and inspection purposes, has become more and more common. On the other hand, business travelers may actually carry a more negative outlook, such as "I'm tired of going overseas," or "if I can avoid going, I will".
Now, what could be the reason? As an example, it may be due to a lot of preparatory work such as internal office procedures before a business trip, collection of local information, preparation of materials and reports, adjustments to the business trip schedule, among many other factors.
We want to create a world where businessmen can be freed from the perceived burden of business trips, change their attitudes toward them, and allow them to have more fun while on them. It is difficult to solve everything at once, but it may be possible to solve a certain problem with one application. We look forward to an app that fully incorporates the ingenious concept of "change the future of businessmen.

The technology and environment surrounding our movements change daily. For example, to create autonomous machines, the highest-level artificial intelligence technology, IoT technology, and communication technology (5G) are used. However, such an example accounts for only the latest 10 years of technology evolution. Ten years, or even 20 years from now, new technologies and new services that we could never imagine today will make the future society more "convenient," "fun," and "simple."
In particular, with autonomous machines, we believe that will involve not simply operating a vehicle, but rather offering a mobility service that can become a centerpiece of sightseeing by increasing the added value in select services. In this challenge, WILLER aims to solve various social issues that are occurring in Asia and ASEAN, not only in Japan but also with start-up companies from around the world. To create a world where everyone can easily and conveniently go anywhere they want to whenever they want to, we are looking for ideas from an open perspective.

(Please choose one of the two below categories to come up with an idea for implementation of ideas with autonomous vehicles.)
[A] Services for solving social issues around the world.
・There is a blank space for traffic that cannot be reached solely by public transportation
・There is no transportation available when you want to go where you want
・Due to differences in language and culture, there is anxiety that makes travel difficult.
[B] Services for changing the experience of travel itself.
・Utilization of vehicles not only for daily life but also for sightseeing and other activities.
・Something that aims and allows for the boarding of or movement within a vehicle.

In the food and beverage industry, the implementation of IT technologies is making headway with food-technology, or 'Food-Tech'. For example, Silicon Valley Startup Companies have begun developing technology for artificial food production in which large corporations and investors have already invested tens of billions of yen. The goal of these technologies is expected to combat the food shortage crisis, which could damage future population growth. The direction of this tech varies from country to country, and in China, the primary focus is on food safety and quality.
On the other hand, in Japan, dine-in and take-out restaurants are now benefiting from new services such as home-deliveries through apps, subscription services, cashless stores and more. However, there is still great technological potential to be discovered regarding the ingredients, flavors and dishes we eat.
So, our attention was turned to curry. As you may already know, curry powder is prepared through a combination of several spices. It is said that there are approximately 20-30 variations of these spices leading to potentially infinite possibilities of flavor depending on the combined mixtures.
This challenge is looking for ideas to develop an application to automate the blending of spices in order to introduce a new service allowing anyone to make curry to suit their own tastes themselves using IT Technology in a soon-to-be-opened curry house.

As one branch of support for compulsory middle school programming education, The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science Japan has published the following in its “Acceleration of Computerized Education Plan”.
Due to recent years’ globalization and rapid advancement of computerization, our children’s surrounding environments are increasingly changing. In order to let children demonstrate their very best abilities, we recognize the need to think proactively while cooperating with others to work hard on discovering and solving new problems and take on new initiatives in value creation.” That is to say, through the programming education offered at educational institutions themselves, it is expected that children’s ability to discover and solve problems as well as creation of further value for them shall be nurtured and allowed to grow.
That being said, by taking a look at the current circumstances surrounding educational institutions, not every teacher is proficient in programming, so it’s necessary to think about the cases in which education for the teachers is required first. There may be cases in which teachers learning programming might think “Programming is too difficult. I don’t even know what we could make using this." There’s also a real possibility that the children themselves might express these feelings and lose interest in programming altogether, which would result in a reversal of priorities.
Therefore this challenge’s theme centers around the accelerated implementation of programming education to create institutions that can yield a plethora of children that can produce value, as well as the planning, proposal and development of a community geared toward educators.

GaiaX is a start-up studio that aims to solve social issues by connecting people together.
We work hard on this as a mission to provide technical support to new entrepreneurs’ investments, project development, and back office.
We also believe that our present society has a lot of room for improvement. The society that has created our modern sense of values is also prone to distortion and tends to lose sight of those values. It’s possible that distortion will go on to manifest itself into an even bigger societal problem.
Our company (GaiaX) in this year’s Grand Challenge is looking for applicants that will take on these societal problems with their disruptive ideas and new projects.

In what’s now called the “age of the 100-Year Life,” advancements in medical care have extended average life expectancy as well as healthy life years (HLY), but the difference between those two figures has largely stayed the same, even while costs for medical care, social security and long-term care have been rapidly increasing. One-third of medical expenses are due to preventable lifestyle-related diseases. As preventing these diseases has become a pressing matter, various healthcare science leadership measures are being taken within healthcare associations.

As Suntory is a new “visualization of health” company we can propose and match solutions that encourage continuous behavior alterations from customers, and by shouldering the responsibility of solving health-related societal issues, we hope to support everyone’s health promotion while continuing to enjoy Suntory products for many years to come.

With the development of modern technologies such as the Internet, Social Media, and even IoT, we are now able to receive the latest information about the world around us in real-time. This kind of real-time information collection has yet to be fully established within the medical industry.

Not only is this necessary socially (Japan has an aging population), it is becoming more and more important to develop this kind of platform to assist in the ever-increasing number of emergencies globally due to issues such as extreme weather and terrorism. As our environment around us is changing in this way, future medical care will require up-to-date medical information which has traditionally been unpredictable and inconsistent. This includes medical care for extending life expectancy and immediate emergencies or disasters, where smooth treatment is vital even if there is a sudden influx of patients.

"I want to save the lives of my loved ones!"
Everybody has had this feeling at one point or another and relying only on doctors and nurses for this aid is not an acceptable solution.
In this Grand Challenge we are seeking ideas and development of the world's first medical platform that can handle medical information and updates from across the world in real time to support healthcare professionals. We hope that a society where everyone can live with peace and well-being can be born from your talented ideas and technologies.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries document, “Crop damage by wild birds and beasts nationwide (2017),” the amount of damage to crops was about 16.4 billion yen, the area of ​​damage was about 53,000 ha, and the amount of damage was about 474,000 tons.
The damage amount per species is about 5.5 billion yen for deer, about 4.8 billion yen for wild boar, and about 900 million yen for monkeys.

Although they are on a declining trend, these are positioned as important issues for the primary industry. For this reason, various challenging efforts are underway to solve problems, and the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries web page lists them as "excellent cases in each region" and "challenging cases in each region".

Under these circumstances, we focused on drones that have undergone rapid technological evolution in recent years. A variety of demonstration experiments have been conducted on drone control of birds and beasts nationwide, but no prominent implementation has yet been achieved. Behind this are issues related to regulations under the Civil Aviation Law, delays in introduction due to the absence of subjects and difficulty in understanding residents.
In this challenge, an idea, plan, and system that can create an ambitious bird and beast extermination system outside the wonders that no one has ever thought about, or a national drone to exterminate birds and beasts will be promoted.
If you wish to conduct a demonstration experiment, we can also provide you with an experiment site.

Since the turn of the 21st century, software-based technology has evolved at a furious pace. However, technology that "supports human self-expression and expands the ability of that person" is still somewhat lagging behind. While still mainstream, mouse and keyboard, touch screens, etc., are all limited to a 20th century UI. As advocacy for diversity is growing, people are longing for new technologies that match their individual personalities and allow them to join in their surrounding communities.
JINS MEME is an innovative device equipped with technology that senses eye movement and blinking all while sporting the look and weight of ordinary glasses.
JINS is continuing R&D to release services that enrich the user's lifestyle by blending into glasses more naturally than currently available products. By maximizing the potential of the sensing technology and enabling character input operations with eye movements, devices that eliminate the restrictions of character input operations for any person in any situation can create a world where humans can live with their devices more comfortably.

Since the turn of the 21st century, software-based technology has evolved at a furious pace. However, technology that "supports human self-expression and expands the ability of that person" is still somewhat lagging behind. While still mainstream, mouse and keyboard, touch screens, etc., are all limited to a 20th century UI.
JINS JINS MEME is an innovative device that tracks eye movement and blinking all while sporting the look and weight of ordinary glasses. JINS is continuing R&D to release services that enrich the user's lifestyle by blending into glasses more naturally than currently available products.
By using this device, current technologies such as computer mice, touch control, and other mobile devices that require you to use your hands will become hands free. As such, what kind of user interface will be best suited for this technology must be considered from the beginning. As we near the post-smartphone future, why not try pioneering the text input/control user interface breakthrough?

Currently, Japanese society is aging at a rapid pace, and expanding medical expenses are putting pressure on our lives. To change this situation, the key is to build a medical system with a focus on preventative medical care, in which each person takes personal responsibility to prevent the onset of diseases before symptoms become sickness.
JINS MEME is a revolutionary device that can acquire various biological data without any long-term effects for the user. JINS is continuing R&D to release services that enrich the user's lifestyle by blending into glasses more naturally than currently available products.
By using data acquired by JINS MEME, “if you collect data from doing X every day, it will become an index of Y, which will turn into vital data that can be used for preventive medical care and health promotion.” We are looking for ideas that use keywords to fill in for “X” and “Y”.

This time around, we’re looking for challengers to take on the theme “Write ‘YES’ on flowing water,” an ambitious and extraordinary grand challenge that doesn’t fit the mold of today’s common knowledge.
“Education is ephemeral, like letters written on the surface of flowing water.” Just as the words of early modern period Japanese philosopher Shinzo Mori say, the concept of writing on water has been synonymous with impossible since ancient times.
On the other hand, since the turn of the millenium, ICT technology has started to delve into and implement new innovations, such as space travel, control of certain phenomena, and other previously-thought-impossible concepts.
This challenge at first glance might seem like something impossible to make reality, but by combining innovative technology with the open minds of men and women of all ages, there might be a chance to find a way to achieve this that nobody has ever thought possible before.
Throughout history there has not yet been an example of writing letters on top of flowing water, and whether or not there is a way to do it is unknown.
For that reason, intuition will account for a large portion of the evaluation of this challenge, so let’s have a lot of fun with it. We'll be waiting for everyone’s ambitious and extraordinary ideas!

Multitasking while using your smartphone is known to be a dangerous activity. Bumping into people and things, traffic accidents, etc. are risks associated with using smartphones.We hope for new ideas and developments that can make these activities safer.
＊Absolutely no accidents, falls, bumps, etc.

With an aging society, a declining birthrate and 20% of the population aged over 65, it is becoming increasingly clear that medical care under health insurance may not be possible in the near future.
Along with measures to improve the birthrate of society, preemptive medical care is becoming more necessary to prevent illness.
Therefore, in an attempt to prevent illness we are planning to create a virtual space in which you can easily manage your own health.
One aspect of this we are hoping to improve is providing a virtual space that can ease and reduce the burdens of healthcare while having fun.
For example, instead of beginning treatment following contraction of a particular illness, prepare the physical and mental conditions in daily life to prevent an illness, or content that can give early detection of subjective symptons, etc. We look forward to your innovative ideas.

Is music the only way to clear up the gloom during your commute?
RadioTalk, Inc. is currently looking for ideas and contents that can answer this question.

Just like a novelist or essayist, "Bloggers" have a different appeal than writers, and "YouTubers" have a different appeal than TV celebrities. We’re looking forward to extraordinary ideas that feature realistic, true-to-life conversations unique to everyday users that they themselves will say “this is the kind of content I want to listen to.”