Osaka Gas Co., Ltd. is taking part in a program in the field of energy and clean technology sponsored by Plug and Play, LLC, a leading accelerator for Silicon Valley in the United States, as we aim to strengthen our activities in open innovation. We are gaining ground with our search for the latest technologies and services, targeting the acceleration of our own technological development and creation of new services. We are the only company in Japan taking part in this program in the field of energy and clean technology.

Tapping into this program, we plan to search for technology under a total of six themes, for example, energy management, sensing technology. In the first theme, which is now finished, we received proposals from five venture companies and are at the stage where we are considering how to effectively use the technologies of one of those companies.

We will continue our search for the latest technologies that will contribute to accelerating our technological development and creation of new services in each theme. Our group will also promote even more open innovation and alliance activities in Japan, in addition to continuing our search for technologies in Silicon Valley.

< Osaka Gas Open Innovation Activities >
Osaka Gas is promoting “open innovation” aimed at accelerating the development of technology, upgrading performances, and reducing costs by combining our own technologies with technologies from outside. We started disclosing our technology needs in fiscal 2009 and have been holding technical exhibitions and promoting linkages with alliances with other companies, technology matching meetings, and industry-academic linkages with universities.
As part of these activities, we turned our attention to Silicon Valley as one of our search routes for state-of-the-art technology. Since fiscal 2016, we have set a booth in Plug and Play’s Tech Center. In this program, we have high expectations that we will see introductions to and proposals from startups unique to Plug and Play, a company that excels in providing support to startups in the field of energy and clean technology.