Innovation stands at a crossroads: While AI and emerging technologies hold transformative potential, current ecosystems often reproduce exclusion and technoableism.
This research project, "Inclusive Ecosystem Development Through Innovation: Disability Entrepreneurship and the Design of an Inclusive Fund at the Kyoto Institute of Technology," explores how innovation can foster entrepreneurship among people with disabilities and how inclusive funding models can support sustainable ecosystems. Its goal is to develop design approaches that are technologically effective, socially inclusive, environmentally responsible, and adaptable across regions.
Fieldwork conducted in Okinawa, Japan, since 2024 centers on two cases: coral restoration projects involving people with cognitive differences and co-design processes with neurodiverse software teams. Using participant observation, interviews, and co-design workshops, the study tests an adaptive framework guided by “strategic drifting”—a flexible approach that values adjustment, diverse participation, and unexpected insights.
The findings extend beyond Japan, offering lessons for regions such as the South Caucasus, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia, where entrepreneurship ecosystems are expanding rapidly but inclusive practices remain limited. By linking Japanese experiences with emerging economies, this research proposes strategies for inclusive innovation funds, accelerator programs, and ecosystem mapping to empower diverse entrepreneurs and advance sustainable growth.
About the speaker:
Annie Vashakmadze comes from Georgia, a country at the crossroads of Europe and Asia. She has extensive experience working at the intersection of policy, entrepreneurship, and international collaboration. She served as head of international relations for Georgia’s Innovation and Technology Agency, as an EU European Innovation Council ambassador, and as deputy chair of the U.N. Economic Commission for Europe’s Committee on Innovation.
During these years, she studied how different countries approach technology and innovation. She observed the European Union’s funding mechanisms and accelerator models, witnessed Georgia’s startup ecosystem grow so rapidly that international accelerators began entering the country, and discovered how Japanese innovation places human well-being at its center—more so than what she had seen in Scandinavia or elsewhere.
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