The LVNS Water Cycle Project connects researchers, startups, large companies, regional companies, and local governments working with water to bring new water cycles that nurture life into society.
Rather than ending with a technology introduction, we start from the challenges faced by regions and industries, bring together the technologies and people needed, and design research and development, field validation, productization, commercialization, and regional expansion as one project.
Large companies
We combine the business foundations, customers, technologies, and funding held by large companies with the new technologies of researchers and startups to develop hypotheses for new businesses.
Leave a Nest organizes challenges and business themes, explores technologies and startups, builds joint-development teams, designs validation plans, and coordinates with regions and researchers. We support verification and project development through the point where a company can make an informed commercialization decision, rather than ending with a one-off technology introduction.
Regional core companies
We take stock of the technologies, facilities, materials, byproducts, and customer bases that regional companies have built over time, and identify new business possibilities in the water-cycle field. Material processing, manufacturing equipment, sensors, construction, food byproducts, logistics, maintenance, and regional networks can all become meaningful assets.
Leave a Nest combines existing technology assets with the knowledge of researchers and startups to develop use-case hypotheses, prototypes, field validations, and business partnerships. We help turn the strengths of regional companies into new products and services beyond the extension of existing markets.
Startups and researchers
We help grow the new technologies held by researchers and startups into businesses that are used in society.
Leave a Nest connects technologies with joint-development companies, validation fields, manufacturing partners, local governments, and funders. We design projects suited to each stage of growth, from validating customer challenges and building a business model to mass production, sales, and expansion in Japan and overseas.
Local governments
Starting from the water-environment and industrial challenges faced by regions, we bring together companies, researchers, startups, and educational institutions to launch projects rooted in the region.
Leave a Nest organizes regional challenges, scouts technologies, designs validation programs, builds participating companies, and facilitates agreement among local stakeholders. We aim to leave behind systems that lead to technology transfer to regional companies, new businesses, talent development, and industrial clusters, rather than ending after a single demonstration.
Together with fisheries cooperatives and fishers
Fishers and others who work on the sea every day are among the people who sense changes in the ocean earliest and most deeply. Leave a Nest sees fisheries cooperatives and fishers not as recipients of technology, but as partners who design new water cycles with us.
We combine knowledge developed in the field with new technologies from researchers and startups and the business foundations of large and regional companies to design and advance projects that create new industries from regional seas, including aquaculture, fishing-ground management, seaweed-bed and tidal-flat restoration, and resource circulation.
Our aim is to build systems in which fishers become the people who create new value and regional seas and industries develop sustainably together, rather than ending with the implementation of a demonstration.
No single organization can create a new water cycle alone.
Researchers and startups create technologies, large companies provide business foundations, regional companies take on manufacturing and operations, and local governments and communities create places for validation. Leave a Nest brings these strengths together around one purpose and designs the roles, funding, intellectual property, validation plan, and path to commercialization.
Challenges related to the water cycle cannot be solved by one company or one technology alone. New knowledge from researchers, the challenges of startups, the business foundations of large companies, the manufacturing capabilities of regional companies, and the fields held by local governments and fishers must be combined to create new water cycles and industries.
Since its founding in 2002, Leave a Nest has connected researchers, startups, large companies, regional companies, and local governments under the principle of bringing “the world’s first knowledge into the world’s common knowledge,” and has created many new businesses. Building on that experience and network, we design and advance even complex water-cycle themes as projects that move from challenge discovery to commercialization.
Researcher network
Through our network of universities and research institutions across Japan, we uncover new scientific knowledge and technology seeds and enable joint research and technology development with researchers suited to each social challenge.
Co-creation platform with startups
Through initiatives including TECH PLANTER, we have grown businesses together with many deep-tech startups. We promote co-creation between startups with new technologies and companies and regions seeking social implementation.
New business development with large companies
We have worked with diverse companies on new-business exploration, joint research, field validation, and commercialization. We accompany projects beyond technology scouting until they can become viable businesses.
Validation fields with regions
Using our network of local governments, regional companies, fisheries cooperatives, and educational institutions across Japan, we build validation fields that cannot be created in a laboratory. We turn regional challenges into opportunities for new industries.
Pathways to manufacturing and commercialization
We work with the diverse players needed for commercialization, including prototyping, manufacturing, intellectual property, fundraising, and overseas expansion, and have a structure for growing technologies through to social implementation.
Leave a Nest’s role is not to introduce technologies or companies. We identify the players needed from the starting point of a social challenge, design each party’s role, and advance the work as one project.
The water cycle is the foundation that connects life, industry, and communities. That is why we combine the technologies, knowledge, fields, and business foundations held by diverse players to create new water cycles that nurture life and the new industries that grow from them.
