About us
2022 - IDEA
In 2022, Jorge Cortell was an Innovation Fellow at the Technology and Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. While judging the Field X student startup project pitches at Harvard Business School—invited by Professor Randolph Cohen—he realized the importance of industry-academia and industry-startup partnerships in order to maximize the chances of commercial success of any innovation. He observed the same dynamic in the following years when Professor Ramesh Raskar invited him to judge AI Demo Day for his class at MIT Media Lab.
Yet, most incubators and accelerators around the world put startups, not industry, at the center. They hope that by attracting capital and using the “spray and pray” method, good outcomes would follow. Unfortunately, that very inefficient method only produces outlier results that generally only benefit venture capitalists, not researchers or founders. A new, improved paradigm was needed.
2023 - EXPERIMENTS TO TEST HYPOTHESIS
For several months, Jorge run a series of experiments to test his hypothesis. First, hosting an Industry Leaders Network event with the investment bank UBS at Harvard's School of Engineering, where a number of Harvard startups pitched to and connected with industry executives from around the world. Then, when he was hired by Harvard Business School (HBS) as Senior Advisor at the Harvard Innovation Laboratories (i-lab), he extended the experiments to his students, organizing similar events with several companies, and the Japan External Trade Organization.
2024 - SUPPORT AND PLANNING
Once the hypothesis was experimentally proven, Jorge started gathering support and consensus around Harvard University for the TECH Tokyo plan. He reviewed 58 regulations, and received enthusiastic support for the plan from over 20 university senior administrators (full list available upon request).
2025 - TECH TOKYO INDEPENDENCE AND LAUNCH
After the Executive Director of the Technology and Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard signed the corresponding certification (available upon request), the real work started. First, in February, Jorge Cortell and Takako Hirata paid a courtesy visit to Japan's Cabinet Minister of Economic Security Minoru Kiuchi. This visit was not representing Harvard University in any way—only the Vice Provost of International Relations can represent Harvard University internationally—it was a courtesy visit to announce our plans. Then, before the inauguration of the program, it was decided—for confidential reasons explained to all stakeholders and during the inaugural event—that the renamed Technology Exchange and Collaboration Hub (TECH Tokyo), would become the NGO subsidiary of a Public Benefit Corporation based in Massachusetts, USA. This allowed the project to become completely independent of Harvard University, and opened the door to collaboration with all the top universities in the world, including Oxford, Cambridge, MIT, and Stanford universities. This independence was underlined by Jorge Cortell moving to Japan with his family, and pledging 1 million US dollars to the initial funding of the project—on top of the Harvard College Fund donations Jorge has provided, at the President Associate level—.
Let's all collaborate to bring innovation and entrepreneurship to life in Japan and the world.
Thank you for your continued support. Stay tuned for updates on our progress!
