2019.04.25

NUT held “SDGs Ideathon in NAGAOKA ~ Reaching for SDGs by Regional Innovation ~ “

Nagaoka University of Technology (NUT) held “SDGs Ideathon in NAGAOKA ~ Reaching for SDGs by Regional Innovation ~ “on March 20th, 2019 in cooperation with National Institute of Technology (KOSEN). It was designed to find innovative solutions to both Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and regional problems people face in their communities with the keyword of local specialty products.

“Ideathon” is a combining word of “idea” and “marathon.” It is an ideation competition event where participants work on teams and discuss a designated theme to ideate possible solutions. A presentation competition happens on the final, and groups who propose excellent ideas is to be awarded.

“SDGs Ideathon” aims at achieving SDGs through engaging the two prominent keys: productivity improvement, and technological innovation. Members of each team provide and share many ideas, then brush up to devise new solutions to: sustainable economic growth in the local communities upon finding regional problems and characteristic factors, also decent work and branding. NUT’s SDGs Ideathon set own three goals:

1. To learn how to harness essential principals and method of creating new ideas to find regional problems while understanding factors and aspects that targeted community faces

2. To make a productive group discussion and find their solutions and make a final presentation.

3. Having interests in cross-realm academic, to acquire annalistic reasoning skills to examine the relationships between communities and SDGs by its multiple points.

This time, the targeted community was Nagaoka-city, Niigata, Japan where NUT campus located, and the designated theme was “KURUMAFU,” wheel-shaped dried wheat gluten, Nagaoka’s specialty savory food product. Five student teams of NUT and KOSEN made intensive discussion with team members and shared each collective knowledge.

Each team consisting of 4-5 students from NUT and 3 KOSEN: Miyakonojo, Akita, Yonago, they came up with unique innovative ideas achieving SDGs and community branding were generated. Team “IBURIGAKKO,” presented KURUMAFU space food project, was won as the best idea award Nobuhiko Azuma, president, NUT gave the team the honorable certificate.

Nagaoka University of Technology continues to foster student’s proactive active abilities besides, developing education method to strive for achieving SDGs, and step forward to progress our SDGs projects to lead society into the future.