<aside> 📣 This report aims to reflect on the content and outcome of the Fall 2022 Cohort of the JVA Fellowship.
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Between October and December 2022, 7 interdisciplinary students from different universities around Tokyo developed innovative solutions based on problem statements provided by 2 project partners. The learning process was accompanied by a design thinking based curriculum with weekly lectures led by professionals with product, design, finance and venture know-how. Besides newfound insights into the user-centric development methodology and tools, students were exposed to the rapidly growing startup ecosystem the Shibuya city provides. As a result, students developed greater confidence in developing solutions for real world problems as well as for starting their own business in the future.
The mission of the JVA Fellowship is to build entrepreneurial self efficacy for university students in Japan. With that mission in mind, we onboarded 7 motivated fellows in October, who were all keen on investing their valuable student-life free-time on developing valuable problem solving skills for their futures. Over the next 3 months, two teams were going to embark on a promising journey of understanding user needs, navigating team challenges, to coming up with a innovative product.
7 students from various universities, majors and countries joined the cohort of fellows this semester. What characterised this cohort of Fellows was diversity in many aspects. The combination of different cultures and personalities provided fertile ground for creative approaches to be generated which would prove vital for the program but also more generally in startups. The previous experiences with startups also varied from students with zero startup experience to some who already had already founded organisations or interned at startups.
While they all seemingly come from very diverse backgrounds, there is one thing uniting them all: Their motivation to build products and solve problems.
Team Lookin partnered with Tigermov as a project partner, an education startup offering worldwide developmental opportunities such as internships and projects to students, schools and business professionals. The problem statement they wanted the fellows to work on is “International University Students in Japan struggle finding career development opportunities!”
Team Hakopack partnered with Solaris Japan, an online retailer for anime and video-game goods. Their problem statement was “Packaging and sending items in Japan is a pain!”
On their learning journey to develop a suitable solution, fellows were supported in 4 important ways: curriculum, venture experts, project partners, and their team.
Curriculum
The curriculum covered a series of 12 lectures aimed at guiding the solution development process. The weekly lectures happened at Portal Point Shibuya and consisted of: