On April 1, 2023, our company (headquartered: Minato-ku, Tokyo, CEO Representative Director: Mina Arai-Ito, which creates new industries and new human resources in the Middle East and Africa, hereinafter referred to as “ZENMONDO”), and Strategic Business Insights, Inc. (headquartered: 333 Ravenswood Avenue Menlo Park, CA, CEO: Katerie Whitman, hereinafter “SBI”) entered into a strategic partnership based on the following three pillars.
1. Seamless consultation from scenario planning to commercialization support
① SBI is an expert in “scenario planning” supported by constantly updated technology and business information intelligence, and highly reliable methodologies.
② ZENMONDO is a “global innovation ecosystem” that supports next-generation businesses from strategic planning to commercialization with the knowledge of professionals from its vast network.
③ Through collaboration between the two companies, we accept uncertainty, prepare multiple future views, make strategic decisions, and support value creation from upstream to downstream based on established methodologies.
2. Joint development of Africa Scenario Scan
① SBI has accumulated know-how in “scenario planning” and “Scan*” over many years in the United States, Europe, and Japan.
② ZENMONDO, as a pioneer in business in Africa and the Middle East, operates a professional bank staffed by experts in and outside of Japan.
③ Through collaboration between the two companies, we aim to lower the hurdles for expanding into Africa by providing simulated experiences of new business opportunities and risks that will arise ahead of change through multiple visions and scenarios of the future.
”Scan” is an intelligence system that creates receptors that are aware of change, quickly captures and shares “signs of change” that appear in the business environment. The former Stanford Research Institute (SRI) was one of the origins of the development of scanning methods, and SBI has inherited that DNA and continues to discover “signs of change.
3. Building a cooperative system at ZENMONDO Dojo Academy/Entrepreneurship Dojo
① ZENMONDO provides in-house new business development support and open innovation implementation support and guidance through matching with startups at the “Dojo Academy/Entrepreneurship Dojo”.
② SBI has a consensus-building tool that involves brainstorming with clients and can be used to create new business ideas and review innovation policies.
② Due to the collaboration between the two companies, we will solve the issues such as, “there is no internal corporate system to promote new business,” “lack of innovative human resources,” “lack of know-how on how to proceed with commercialization,” “how to present ideas, how to evaluate, how to proceed with further consideration.” This will help resolve issues in promoting new business, such as “I don’t know what to do” and “I can’t come up with an idea in the first place.”
About Strategic Business Insights (SBI)
SBI is a consulting company spun off from SRI International (formerly Stanford Research Institute) in the United States.
Established in 1946, the Stanford Research Institute (currently SRI International) is a non-profit organization that supports the operations of companies, governments, and public organizations around the world through not only contract research and development, but also consulting related to technology management. It is a for-profit think tank. SBI originated from the Business Intelligence Center established within SRI in 1958 for the purpose of future insight research, and contributed to the development of SBI’s scenario planning and Scan processes. This section, which had been providing services as an internal organization of the NPO for about 40 years, became independent from SRI in 2001, taking over a wide range of information services and consulting functions. In 2009, the company name was changed to the current Strategic Business Insights, Inc.
For more information, see this PR Times article.
https://prtimes.jp/main/html/rd/p/000000004.000104211.html
