With sights set on being an “innovation city”, Osaka City’s core base is the Osaka Innovation Hub (OIH). The Osaka government has made its mission to realise an open innovation ecosystem in Osaka/Kansai area as a place for supporting innovation creation. The city is very active in organising events to offer domestic and international startups opportunities to create new business and scale up.
Fukuoka City is pushing the vision of being a “Global Startup City”. The government is actively putting in efforts to attract not only Japanese entrepreneurs, but also overseas startups to the city and help them in their business efforts. They have various initiatives over the years to bring the vision to fruition, such as “Startup Visa”, “Fukuoka Growth Next” and the most recent “Fukuoka Global Startup Center”. The latter specializes in supporting domestic startups in Fukuoka City and developing overseas businesses’ and foreign startups’ activities in the city.