ANI welcomed the Japanese Minister of State for Science and Technology Policy, Takura Hirai, on 12 August, to discuss the strengthening of collaboration with Japan in terms of innovation policy and the entrepreneurship-friendly ecosystem created in Portugal.
With an ambitious medium and long term strategy for innovation policy and development in Japan, Minister Takura Hirai came to find out about the Portuguese situation within the scope of programs to form links between companies and the scientific and technological system, specifically the Interface Centres and CoLAB (Interface Program), technology-based entrepreneurship support mechanisms, corporate R&D and business acceleration.
The day's agenda was featured the presentation of the mission and programmes managed by ANI, along with Portugal’s evolution in the main international innovation indicators and rankings and challenges for Science and Innovation in Portugal. Minister Hirai presented the main priorities of the strategy for the next 5 years, the "Moonshot", as well as the "Pitch to the Minister" initiative, which aims to support start-ups aimed at addressing challenges facing Japanese society, such as the ageing of the population or the energy transition, among others. The Moonshot program is open to collaboration with the entire world, and Monistro Hirai invited Portugal to participate in the major conference he is organising in Japan in December to explore collaboration.
ANI will actively collaborate with the identification of opportunities for collaboration between business and R&D entities from the two countries in the areas of R&D and innovation. This goal may be given a boost in 2020 when the national presidency of TAFTIE (European Network of Innovation Agencies) will be held by ANI. One of the Japanese agencies - NEDO - is an associate member of this network and the subject of International Collaboration will be the focus of the annual conference to be held in Lisbon in June 2020.