Products
Honda Venture Supports Freedom of Mobility for Visually Impaired: IGNITION Supports Challenges of Starting a Business
Honda engineers with a desire to help the visually impaired walk freely, brought their technology to the world by starting a new business.
IGNITION, Honda’s new business creation program, is designed to turn such passionate aspirations of employees into reality. In this project, Honda welcomed new supporters of entrepreneurship and commercialization from outside the company.
The common mentality shared by all three parties (engineers, Honda, and external supporters) was “facing social issues.” In fact, this is the very essence of Honda’s DNA.
Honda’s DNA of taking on challenges of social issues
Since its founding, Honda has taken on the challenge of solving social issues based on the idea that technology is for people, and many people associate Honda with this challenging spirit. Taking on challenges is part of Honda’s DNA.
Honda’s philosophy, which guides the daily actions of its employees, has a management policy of respect for theory, ideas, and time. Honda has always valued the ideas of its employees, as in 1970, more than 50 years ago, when company founder Soichiro Honda initiated the “Icon (Idea Contest).”
Thanks to this corporate culture, there are many excellent technologies and ideas within the company, but there are many ideas that are still dormant because they lack the pieces to take shape as products and services.
By nurturing and giving shape to these employees’ thoughts and dormant ideas, Honda hopes to solve social issues and create new value, further inspiring the DNA of Honda’s challenging spirit. IGNITION is a new business creation program that began in 2017 at Honda R&D.
IGNITION attracted a wide variety of ideas, some of which are now being considered for commercialization within the company. One such idea is “Ropot,” a traffic safety advice robot that was born out of a desire to reduce traffic accidents involving children, even if only marginally.
Bringing innovative ideas and technologies to society as quickly as possible:
Entrepreneurship added to IGNITION as an option
In the four years since IGNITION was launched, various institutional reforms have been implemented to commercialize more ideas. While Honda aims to commercialize internally those with a high affinity with Honda’s existing businesses, there were some proposals that could provide value to society more quickly by starting a venture company and taking advantage of its characteristics. This led to the adding of starting up new businesses as an option. Furthermore, from April 2021, Honda expanded the scope of the program to include not only Honda R&D, but also employees of Honda Motor Co., Ltd., without regard to the number of years they have been with the company or the department they belong to.
Honda’s ideas igniting the fire of change to solve social issues
Ashirase Inc., developer of the Ashirase navigation system for the visually impaired, was established as the first venture project to originate from IGNITION.
Satoshi Haneda, from IGNITION’s administrative office, AyumuWataru Chino, developer of Ashirase, and Akihiko Nagata, a member of the IGNITION judge panel and representative of UntroD, an investment fund that provided support for the start-up of Ashirase, discuss IGNITION.
Satoshi Haneda, IGNITION administration
Within Honda, there are various technologies and ideas lying dormant, and there is a challenging spirit. However, if an idea does not fit within the framework of existing Honda businesses, it may be difficult to give shape to it. We thought about how we could bring out the technologies and ideas of employees with such dreams, and created a system called IGNITION, which also includes the option of starting a business.
People - not technology - are vital: strong will is the driving force
With this new option of entrepreneurship, outside investors and venture capitalists are indispensable collaborators. Nagata explained how IGNITION looks from outside Honda.
Akihiko Nagata, UntroD CEO
From a venture capitalist’s perspective, IGNITION is very attractive. Honda is a leading global company in Japan, and everyone knows how great Honda is as a manufacturing company, but it is the engineers and researchers at Honda on the other side of the world who who bring more value to IGNITION with more exposure.
People tend to think of real-tech funds as companies that invest in technology, but in reality, they invest in solutions to social issues. In this respect, our company and Honda’s IGNITION are aligned.
From the standpoint of supporting startups, the people are important in starting a business, not the technology, and their strong desire to solve the world’s problems. If you have a strong will, it will become the driving force to overcome the obstacles, and more than anything else, that desire will lead to support from many people, leading to more friends and help from other companies.
What I would also like to mention from an investor’s viewpoint is that Honda has said that its capital investment radio in venture companies it establishes is less than 20 percent. This 20 percent figure is a fine line, just low enough to not give a sense of majority as an external shareholder. The venture companies that Honda sends out are alumni, but they are not under its control. 20 percent is a clear message from Honda.
“Don’t give up on walking freely”: The passion behind Ashirase
Chino spoke of establishing IGNITION’s first venture company, and the development of Ashirase.
Ashirase in-shoe navigation system
Ashirase is a navigation device to support the visually impaired to walk. By attaching Ashirase to a shoe, it works in conjunction with a smartphone navigation app to provide instructions such as straight ahead, turn right or left, or stop, through vibrations. The desire to empower people with visual impairments to move freely, by considering “walking” as a form of mobility, was the starting point for the Ashirase development.
Honda is a mobility manufacturer of cars and motorcycles, and as I was involved in the development of automatic driving and electric vehicles at Honda, I began to wonder about the essence of mobility.
Then, I lost a relative with a visual impairment who fell into a river, and that accident made me rethink walking as a form of mobility.
After that, I had more opportunities to talk with the visually impaired, and I realized that they had given up on something that is normal for us, namely walking. We want the visually impaired to keep up the hope of walking freely. It was with this desire in mind that we embarked on the development of Ashirase.
Chino says he conducted interviews with visually impaired people in order to commercialize the product.
What we learned from the interviews was that many visually impaired people live their daily lives mainly by using their sense of hearing and touch. So we decided to focus on their feet.
Ashirase is a device that attaches to shoes and vibrates for navigation. It does not interfere with hearing and does not block the hand holding a white cane. In addition, we took into account the opinions of the visually impaired, who value the sense of touch on the soles of their feet when walking, which led us to the idea of a shoe-mounted device with a three-dimensional structure that does not place the device on the soles of the feet.
There was positive feedback from users of the refined Ashirase
When we had a visually impaired person actually use Ashase, he commented that he could hear the voices of people choosing flowers in front of a shop, because he could walk more comfortably. These words made me very happy and encouraged me a lot.
Ashirase was completed because of considering social issues all the way
Chino had finally succeeded in starting Ashirase Inc., but says the road to this point was not an easy one.
Wataru Chino, Ashirase develope
I applied to IGNITION a year ago, but was not chosen in the final selection. However, I did not want to give up on the development of Ashirase just because I was not selected for IGNITION.
I was sure that the mobility of Ashirase would help many visually impaired people. Believing this, I continued to take on challenges at every opportunity. It was then that Haneda asked me if I would like to try again with IGNITION, adding the option of starting up a business.
In starting the business, we thoroughly identified what we lacked, and we realized that we were weak on the business side. The team was a group of technicians, and we were weak from a business standpoint, such as management. So, we received advice from UntroD and refined our business plan and other aspects.
It’s a well-known story that when Honda was founded, Soichiro Honda worked on technology and ideas, and Takeo Fujisawa supported him in terms of management and sales, right? As venture capitalists, we want to be like Takeo Fujisawa. In this case, we supported Chino’s idea, with his technology and conviction, from a business perspective.
I take pride in the strength of my desire to bring Ashirase to the world at any cost. However, we were grateful for the specific perspective we received as we reworked the plan to determine how to proceed with the project as a business, and we were encouraged by the advice that passion and conviction were important.
I can say this now, but in the beginning they were lacking in many areas. However, Chino’s conviction was very strong, so I was not worried. In fact, with a little advice, we understood the areas that needed improvement, and the business plan became more realistic.
In starting a business, more important than technology and products, is how closely you can relate to social issues, how well you understand these issues, and how much you think about the end users. In this respect, Chino went to any lengths to seriously address the social issue of visually impaired people walking.
In addition to the support through IGNITION, UntroD has decided to invest in Ashirase Inc. We felt empathy for Chino’s approach to social issues, and we wanted to bring Ashirase to the world in the same way.
Bringing Honda’s new wave to the world, one step at a time
IGNITION is one way to further invigorate the challenging spirit that is Honda’s DNA, to solve social issues, and to accelerate the creation of new value.
We want to make the world a better place by supporting employees who have the will to move forward and want to contribute to society.
I hope that this program will be a catalyst for everyone to take on new challenges, whether it be in the form of internal work or entrepreneurship, to create new waves and create things and services that do not exist yet. And, I hope that these challenges will help solve even one of society’s problems and expand the possibilities of mobility and lifestyles for as many people as possible.
Honda will surely introduce new solutions in the future, and hopes people will look forward to Honda’s new challenges.
IGNITION is meant to “ignite the passion for social change that lies dormant within individual employees.” Some proposals at IGNITION are planned to be commercialized internally, while others are suitable for the process of venture start-up and commercialization. Regardless of the method, this program supports Honda employees who have a passion to contribute to society and give shape to their ideas.