On Thursday, May 2025, 5, Showa Women's University will hold a social business contest with the University of Colorado Boulder. Approximately 15 business students from the University of Colorado Boulder will be invited to the campus, along with approximately 40 students enrolled in specialized courses at the Showa Women's University Department of Business Design. A total of 40 people, including Japanese and American teams, will compete in 80 teams.
Since 2017, the University of Colorado Boulder's Leeds School of Business and Showa Women's University have been conducting international joint classes combining online and face-to-face classes. In preparation for the contest, the students began joint research online only in February 2025, overcoming time differences and language barriers to put together ideas. They will meet face-to-face for the first time in May when the Colorado students come to Japan, and will deepen their exchange not only through the contest but also through independent activities such as providing tourist information for Tokyo.
This year's theme is "US-Japan Joint Creation of Business in a Third Country: Promotion of UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) - Leveraging the experience and resources of Japan and the United States to create a social business that promotes the SDGs in emerging countries." As in the previous year, the focus will be on issues facing developing and emerging countries, and students from Japan and the United States will jointly propose solutions using business methods, and will submit problem-solving proposals in English that will promote five of the 17 SDGs. The judges will include analysts from Sumitomo Corporation Global Research Co., Ltd., which analyzes international situations, international journalists, think tankers specializing in social innovation, and experts from social investment funds, and will evaluate the entries from the perspective of social investors.
