Honda Motor Co. has embarked on a program to support employees' attempts to start their new businesses within the company, or even beyond the company as independent start-ups, to attempt to invigorate its corporate culture by encouraging its workers' originality, the company said June 11.
Honda already has such support system in the research divisions, and it will expand the initiative to cover employees in any division, such as production, sales or business administration.
Even when Honda invests money in such start-ups, its equity position will be less than 20%, so that the entrepreneurs can retain independence in managing their own businesses.
As a first result of this entrepreneurship initiative, automotive engineers established a company to develop a system "Ashirase" to help the visually impaired navigate themselves while walking.
Insole devices attached to the shoes vibrate by transmitting information from a smartphone app to guide the user to the destination. The system incorporates technologies related to autonomous driving. The start-up aims to put the system into commercial use by fiscal 2022.
Yasuhide Mizuno, a managing officer at Honda, said in an online briefing session June 11: "It is always a blow to see our excellent human resources venture out of our company. But we have concluded that this program would stimulate our company even more."
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