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On February 16, 2023, ILLUMINATE was held at Moon Creative Lab's Tokyo studio. This pitch event invited seven select Idea Owners to share their new business idea to the Moon Committee in hopes to be selected for incubation. The event was live-streamed live for Mitsui employees all over the world.<hr><h3>What is ILLUMINATE?</h3>ILLUMINATE is an event series that shines a light on the next generation of business creators to create something that’s never been done before.All Mitsui employees are encouraged to submit their ideas to Moon, and if selected they will get a chance to pitch their ideas at the ILLUMINATE event. If they are chosen by the Moon Committee after the pitch, they are seconded to Moon, where they will become a Entrepreneur-in-Residence to work on creating their business while receiving support from Moon.Since some Idea Owners participated remotely in other countries, the event was held in a hybrid format by connecting Moon's Palo Alto studio, Tokyo studio, and the locations of some Idea Owners.Each team was given five minutes to pitch followed by a Q＆A session with&nbsp; Moon Committee members.&nbsp;<h2><img src="https://moon-website-prod-images.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/ILLUMINATE_report_1bcda39f3e.jpg" alt="Moon Event Illuminate 2023"> &nbsp;</h2><h3>Discover ideas that will change the world!</h3>Seven individual ideas and their Idea Owners from around the world participated at this ILLUMINATE event.&nbsp;<ul><li>Eureka: an innovative space education program incorporating satellite development.&nbsp;</li><li>EcoTour: allows tourists to find and book ecological experiences in Japan.&nbsp;</li><li>LightningCare: a new choice for in-home care.&nbsp;</li><li>Pandora: uses AI for data visualization of car service diagnoses.&nbsp;</li><li>Artemia: improves the production of aquatic feed to keep up with demand.&nbsp;</li><li>Minutes Database: tracks meeting minutes to help collaboration.&nbsp;</li><li>Fulfiller: a curry-based weight loss meal program.&nbsp;</li></ul>Each team shared their pitch and passion as the event was live-streamed to Mitsui &amp; Co. employees around the world. The event had a very active and in-depth Q&amp;A session, with great questions, words of encouragement and support sent worldwide via the chat.&nbsp;Moon Creative Lab is always looking for new business Idea Owners to participate in the ILLUMINATE event series.

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In this article, a Moon Mate shares her experience and learning from an ILLUMINATE event.<hr><h3>Key learnings:</h3><ul><li>Take a step further to create your own opportunities to be involved. "Stretch our comfort zone"&nbsp;</li></ul><hr><img src="https://moon-website-prod-images.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/My_project_a1c77cf7d1.jpg" alt="My project.jpg">In August, I visited Moon Creative Lab’s Tokyo studio for the very first time for ILLUMINATE, an event by Moon that shines a light on the next generation of business creators. The ILLUMINATE event series is an opportunity for Moon to engage with those interested in building new businesses and getting first-hand experience with our incubation process. The focus of the events will change over time, but this was our first time engaging with Organizations, Business Units, and task forces from our parent company.&nbsp;&nbsp;During this ILLUMINATE, selected teams took part in a Make-a-thon – an event to help develop novel ideas into potential businesses, and in this case, expand on existing organizations and business units. Participants spent two full days building on ideas, working through the design process from ideation to concept creation, and developing their storytelling skills to present their ideas and prototypes at a final showcase event.&nbsp;During two days of Make-a-thon, Moon members help Idea Owners polish their ideas by pushing them to ask the right questions, experiment fast, and better explain their hypotheses through quick prototypes. Design thinking is a non-linear and iterative process involving five phases: emphasize, define, ideate, prototype, and test. In these five stages, ideas can form, shape, and shift multiple times, and that’s how a team refines their idea.<img src="https://moon-website-prod-images.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/My_project_13a5b75e73.jpg" alt="My project.jpg"><h3>Day 1｜Couldn’t keep up with the team discussion…</h3>During the lunch break on the first day, I had a chance to talk to one of our participants, Shiho Hayashi from the&nbsp;Nutrition &amp; Agriculture Business Unit&nbsp;who is&nbsp;new in her industry. Shiho confided that she felt completely lost in her team's discussions. “My lack of general understanding of the industry coupled with my poor English skills caused general confusion for me in our group discussions. I'm not sure if I should come back tomorrow if&nbsp; I can't even contribute” she told me.Shiho’s reluctance is understandable. The design process forces you to stretch your comfort zone, a value that lies at Moon’s core. In fact, the design process can be messy, and confusing, especially for those who have never experienced it before. I explained to Shiho that it was okay and normal to feel these struggles and not have all the answers, and assured her I would try to help her however I could.&nbsp;<h3>Day 2｜Create your own opportunities to be involved.</h3>Shiho seemed to be different from the first day. Even though she was still nervous, she continued to participate in the discussions. If there was anything she didn't understand, she always asked questions, and even during the fast-paced discussions in English, she waited for the right time and shared her opinion by receiving Moon members’ support. She was creating her own opportunities to get involved. Eventually, the whole team starts to change as well. As Shiho continued to ask questions with a positive attitude, the members began to deepen their mutual understanding of the discussion, and the discussion became more active and more questions arose.&nbsp; As a result, team members started asking Shiho’s opinion.This event is a great example of one of the Moon’s values "Stretch your comfort zone", and how anyone can practice this value.<h3>I was only thinking if I’m contributing enough or not.</h3>After ILLUMINATE, she shared her experience with me.”On the first day, I was trying to contribute with my knowledge. I messaged my manager on the first day when I was struggling, and he told me to enjoy the process because everything has its own value. Of course, it's important to think about what I can offer to the team. However, my manager's words made me realize I wasn't thinking about what I can learn by participating in this experience. Coming into the second day, I participated with a different mindset. I made sure to ask questions if there was anything I didn't understand. It was really difficult to keep up with the high-speed discussions conducted in English, so I tried to share my opinions and understandings individually with Moon team members at my own pace. I made my own opportunities to be involved. Eventually, the members started throwing balls at me. Through those two days, I think I was able to learn how not to be too scared of making mistakes.”&nbsp;Shiho taught me that stretching your comfort zone doesn't have to mean forcing yourself to take a huge dive into the unknown. It can also mean changing your mindset, taking baby steps, and showing up. By doing so, not only can you give yourself more opportunities, but you can also create an environment that encourages others to try and challenge themselves.&nbsp;To generate innovative ideas, we need an environment where everyone can speak up and ask questions and feel psychologically safe. If you can create that environment, you can give yourself confidence. From the story of Shiho who continued to challenge herself to contribute to the team despite the difference in experience and the language barrier, I think there are important lessons that we all can learn.<hr><ul><li>Differences in experience stimulate discussion.</li><li>By increasing the number of questions and making the discussion more active, verbalize the implicit knowledge among members.</li><li>By reducing the number of members who are only giving or receiving, create an environment where more ideas can come up.</li><li>Do not wait until someone creates a safe environment for you to speak up. Be the one to create that environment for others.</li></ul><hr>Kurumi CanoneoMoon Creative Lab Japanese-English Interpreter

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In this article, a Moon Mate shares his experience and learning from submitting an idea to Moon Creative’s ILLUMINATE event in February 2023.&nbsp;<hr><h3>Key Learnings&nbsp;</h3><ul><li>Identifying problems can be more challenging than finding solutions&nbsp;</li><li>Find inspiration by drawing from personal experiences&nbsp;</li><li>Recognize lessons from “failures”</li></ul><hr><img src="https://moon-website-prod-images.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/021423_Finding_Problem_8b9fad59bc.png" alt="021423_FindingProblem.png">I recently submitted my first business idea to Moon Creative Lab for a pitch event they held in February 2023. However, my idea was not selected to move ahead.Having worked at Mitsui for 16+ years and over four years at Moon Creative Lab, this was not my first, and definitely not my last, unsuccessful attempt in my career. To some, having an idea not selected by the company you work for might be seen as a failure. Yet, I wouldn’t be quick to label it quite that way because I have gained something even more profound from the experience as a whole. I walked away with something valuable that I will forever take with me moving forward.What was the key learning I had from my experience?&nbsp;<blockquote>"Finding problems can be harder than finding ideas."</blockquote>So, how did I end up here, thinking about problems instead of solutions?&nbsp;How might we make logistics easy for tourists to buy as much as they want?The inspiration for my idea came from trips to Japan when I saw many tourists buying more than they were able to carry back home. The question, “How might we make logistics easy for tourists to buy as much as they want?” came to me, so I spent time observing and talking to different tourists at the duty-free cashier counter. Almost everyone told me they wouldn't spend more money on shipping and prefer carrying their items for safety’s sake, even when they bought more than they could likely carry.&nbsp;I realized from their responses that that was not really an immediate problem to solve, but rather a personal preference. And as a tourist who doesn’t really shop a lot, I don’t share the same pain, so I would have to rely more on others’ perspectives to develop the idea further.<h3>Find ideas from personal experiences&nbsp;</h3>How might we help senior citizens when they struggle with the evolution of technology?I wasn’t ready to give up after my first failed attempt at identifying a new business idea. I started thinking back about my own life and couldn’t stop thinking about my parents. During the pandemic when most of the world was working remotely, I remembered how often my parents would contact me just to help them with small technology problems. An app that needed updating on their phone or they couldn’t remember the password to login to their computer, or even how to adjust the size of the font on their screens. I became their technology wingman. Had it not been for me, I don’t think they would have ever had the patience and capability to figure things out themselves. It became quite an annoyance for me, and something I just had to laugh at and complain about with colleagues. Ironically enough, they were also experiencing the same problem more or less with their parents and grandparents!&nbsp;This was the moment a lightbulb inside of me turned on.&nbsp;I turned my business idea towards “How might we help senior citizens when they struggle with the evolution of technology?”&nbsp;I started to investigate by asking my family questions. One of the concerns my parents expressed was that they didn’t feel comfortable being guided by a stranger on their personal cell phones or laptops, which was why they turned to family. That could be a large challenge for any paid services if people are not ready to seek help from outside the family.So, I changed my thinking and started considering my father who is in his 70s and unable to move as swiftly as he did in his 30s. He is not a person who exercises regularly, so I was worried about his health and couldn’t help but wonder,&nbsp;“How might we encourage senior citizens to exercise more to be healthier?”How might we encourage senior citizens to exercise more to be healthier?My mind started down another ideation rabbit hole, but the deadline of idea submission was fast approaching. I wasn’t able to talk to people to better understand their behaviors like I had with my two previous ideas. This made things tough and I felt that the idea I had settled on felt rushed and without much context.&nbsp;Time was up. I submitted my idea and hoped for the best. Regretfully yet unsurprisingly, my idea was not selected to move forward to the pitch event. I would be lying if I told you I wasn’t bummed, because I was. But instead of shying away from other experiences, I used this as an opportunity to learn why I ended up where I was.&nbsp;<h3>Recognize lessons from “failures”</h3>I realized that no matter how “good” we think an idea should be, we should never forget the importance of identifying the actual problem that the idea should solve.&nbsp;&nbsp;Take my senior citizen exercise idea as an example. Knowing my father is old and not as mobile as he used to be, I immediately jumped to the conclusion that he needed to exercise to be more mobile again – without giving much thought to the problems my father was actually facing. I could have asked, “What limitations does my dad have as a 70-year-old man? What does he struggle doing physically? What about his mental, emotional, and spiritual health could I also investigate?” Questions like these might have helped me look more into what my father&nbsp;actually wants instead of what I&nbsp;think he wants.My takeaway from this experience is that it’s better to analyze my own problems or ones that I am most familiar with because I’d likely have more insights and motivation to solve them! Rather than seeking outside of yourself trying to find solutions to what you&nbsp;think other people are struggling with, it’s sometimes best to look within yourself and analyze your own problems first to find an idea worth solving.&nbsp;Many people have told me “It's very hard to have a great idea,” but when it comes down to creating something new, it's about solving problems, which are more about looking deeper than the surface of just a “great” idea. The hard part is understanding the root of the problem itself. And that can lead to even better ideas.&nbsp;So, do you care to join me in finding some interesting and necessary problems worth solving? Be sure to&nbsp;<a href="https://mooncreativelab.us20.list-manage.com/subscribe/post?u=d99815b9bbaab382f9236d1b5&amp;id=cf5d07672c">sign up for our newsletter</a> to find out when our next upcoming pitch event and other events will take place.&nbsp;

ILLUMINATE 2023 Pitch Event Report

How a First-Year Newbie Brought Change to the Entire Team: Stretching Your Comfort Zone

What Is My Problem? Learning That Finding a Problem Can Be Just as Hard as Finding a Solution

Join the Moon Community!

ILLUMINATE - Moon Stories Blog

ILLUMINATE 2023 Pitch Event Report

How a First-Year Newbie Brought Change to the Entire Team: Stretching Your Comfort Zone

What Is My Problem? Learning That Finding a Problem Can Be Just as Hard as Finding a Solution

Join the Moon Community!