Academia and Corporates Utilize the City for Seamless Research, Validation, and Commercialization: Mitsui Fudosan and Relic Establish the Kashiwanoha Co-creation Organization

### Key Points of this Release

- Mitsui Fudosan and Relic, which has supported over 5,000 new business development projects, have signed a business alliance agreement. Specialized members from both companies have been seconded to establish a project team called the 'Kashiwanoha Co-creation Organization' within UDCK Town Management. - Existing initiatives such as the 'CO-GROWTH' co-growth program will be restructured and integrated into a new action brand called 'CO-GROWTH' for new industry creation. - This is a pioneering domestic initiative that completely integrates the co-creation environment of Kashiwanoha Smart City (hardware/community) with new business development functions (software/programs) to implement a seamless mechanism up to commercialization. - The goal is to continuously create businesses from Japan's top-level seeds, aiming to form a cycle where industries are born and concentrated in Kashiwanoha Smart City, with a target of 100 ambitious business creations and industrial clusters over the next 10 years.

Mitsui Fudosan Co., Ltd., which has been promoting urban development for 20 years in Kashiwanoha Smart City, and Relic Inc., which has supported over 5,000 new business developments nationwide, have entered into a business alliance. They will integrate the city-scale co-creation environment with new business development functions under the action brand 'CO-GROWTH.'

To accelerate industrial creation and concentration, the 'Kashiwanoha Co-creation Organization' has been established within UDCK Town Management, a public-private-academic urban management organization.

### Basic Actions of the Organization

This organization will integrally execute the following four basic actions for business ideas and projects inside and outside the region:

**Action 1: Born** In collaboration with the University of Tokyo, Chiba University, and the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) located in Kashiwanoha, the organization will implement a new mechanism to discover technical seeds from researchers and students and commercialize research results.

**Action 2: Call** Utilizing Relic's network of 5,000 companies and Mitsui Fudosan's network of several thousand companies, as well as venture co-creation and CVC networks, the organization will attract startups and large corporate projects by appealing to the attractiveness of Kashiwanoha as a real-world testing field.

**Action 3: Try** The organization provides comprehensive and rapid support for verification tests, including regulatory coordination, securing verification sites, consumer feedback, and data acquisition support.

**Action 4: Grow** Leveraging Relic's strengths in business development, the organization provides seamless support tailored to the growth stage, including hypothesis building, market expansion, capital policy, and even investment functions.

### Future Initiatives The organization will focus on programs for university-born startups and recruiting specific verification themes.