https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181028005003/en/

TOKYO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct 28, 2018--Mitsui Chemicals, Inc. (TOKYO:4183)(President & CEO: Tsutomu Tannowa) and Chitose Group (CEO: Tomohiro Fujita), a group of biotechnology startups, have jointly launched the "0 to 1 Project" as a novel open innovation initiative to foster "business and talents” based on unique technology seeds. In order to commercialize Mitsui Chemicals’ plant cell culture technology and Chitose Group’s microbiota-activated cultivation technology*, Chitose Group has established “PHYTO Renaissance, Inc.” and “Tierraponica, Inc.” respectively. Chitose Group accepts Mitsui Chemicals employees as a representative of each company and aims to put the businesses of both companies on growth track.

New businesses must go through a series of phases, starting-up from 0 to 1, 1 to 10 and 10 to 10,000, with each phase requiring entirely different funding levels, human resources and organizational structures. Chitose Group has rich experiences in developing skills and know-hows for launching new businesses (= from phase 0 to 1) based on biotechnology in a wide range of fields such as agriculture, energy, medicine and food. Chitose Group proposed this “0 to 1 Project” to share these skills and know-hows to help large companies foster businesses and talents. At the same time, Mitsui Chemicals has sent 2 employees as a representative of each new company in order to obtain and accumulate skills and know-hows for the 0 to 1 phase by implementing “hypothesis - execution process” quickly and frequently while maintaining a sense of speed. The project launched last April and is set to run for a three-year period, concluding in March 2021.