"Business Accelerator Kanagawa (BAK)," operated by Kanagawa Prefecture, creates business collaboration projects between large and medium-sized companies based in the prefecture and high-quality start-ups, and supports the formation of communities for open innovation.
The program, in which Shiseido Research Institute's open innovation program "fibona" also participated, was adopted in August 2021. Eight co-creation projects by a total of 16 companies, including a remote experience farm service, a new sports game viewing proposal, and a Generation Z support service that enables even beginners to enjoy driving a car, have been conducted as verification experiments.

On February 25, 2022, an event called "BAK Meetup Fes - BAK DAY" was held online to present all eight of these co-creation achievements at once.

For this project, fibona has teamed up with A10 Lab Inc., which operates the habit-forming application "Min-Challe", to conduct a demonstration experiment on the theme of "beauty practices and peer support for personalized healthy beauty".

*Peer support: Helping each other while continuing to communicate with others in the same situation.

Demonstration with startups conducted for the Corona disaster

The Corona disaster has brought about major changes in lifestyles, and more and more people are feeling the physical and mental discomfort and isolation that comes with it.

“We would like to discuss how we can realize and provide physical and mental wellness and personalized health and beauty under unstable circumstances where skin, feelings, and behavior are changing. This is why we decided to co-create this project with A10 Lab." He began his presentation by explaining the background of this co-creation.

What is healthy beauty?

Because we are in an era of great fluctuation and change in social environments, Ominami defines healthy beauty as "aiming for a beauty that fits you.”

Shiseido, which has long studied beauty-related behaviors and lifestyles, and A10 Lab, which is well versed in peer support know-how, joined forces to conduct this demonstration experiment, and the results exceeded the expectations of the members of both companies.

Demonstration results showed a decrease in stress in about 80% of participants

What were the results? Onan prefaced his discussion with the following statement: "The data has not been fully analyzed yet," but the results were as follows.

We saw a decrease in stress levels in about 80 percent of participants who used the beauty and peer support program for a period of time, even as the number of infections was skyrocketing."

In addition, as a result of the positive attitude toward the beauty act through peer support, behavioral changes were observed in their daily lives afterwards.
Peer support through “Min-Challe” can be viewed, in other words, as peer pressure. Because we are connected with others who share the same goals, we cannot betray them. We believe that this psychological factor has also had a positive effect.

In addition, many participants have become more conscious of facing "personalized peer support" after the experiment as a result of this trial.
For example, through the experiment, Ms. A became more conscious of her diet and uploaded many photos of vegetable dishes; Ms. B started to exercise more frequently by stretching; Ms. C uploaded photos of her cosmetics at ......; and so on. “She has taken on new challenges that she had wanted to do but had not been able to do," he explained, citing specific examples.

The two main results of the demonstration experiment were: "Reduced stress and the challenge of trying something new. These two points are the results we have seen from the demonstration experiment. As soon as we have finished analyzing all the data, we will devise a way out through presentations at academic conferences and internal proposals," he added, expressing his ambitions for the future.

During the Q&A session following the presentation, the participants asked a number of frank questions, such as “did anyone drop out along the way?", “do you see any indication that there might be a difference in age or place of residence?", “what specific actions were taken to promote health and beauty?"

New Innovations Emerging in Times of Crisis

Despite the protracted Corona disaster, times of crisis are also times of opportunity for new things to be born. Just as Airbnb and Uber made great strides in the wake of the Lehman Brothers collapse, there must be innovations that are born in times of change. fibona will continue to take on new challenges.



（text: Hanae Abe　edit: Kaori Sasagawa / Emi Kawasaki）