JERA and SMBC Establish the Social Value Co-Creation Forum as a General Incorporated Association2025/06/17

JERA Co., Inc. (“JERA”) and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (“SMBC”) have jointly launched a general incorporated association, the Social Value Co-Creation Forum, with both JERA and SMBC as founding members.

The purpose of this new association is to build and provide to society a platform for creating new value while working to solve social issues. To achieve this, the association will bring together diverse perspectives and values through ongoing cross-disciplinary dialogue, engage in initiatives aimed at discovering solutions to the issues brought to light through such dialogue, and develop innovative talent with the capability to create new value.
JERA, whose mission is to provide cutting-edge solutions to the world’s energy issues, and SMBC, which has positioned creating social value as a core pillar of their current medium-term management plan, have founded this association based on an agreement to collaboratively work toward the association’s purpose, with the support of KPMG AZSA LLC, which shares the same goals.

With the goal of creating new value, this association will host and operate the “Social Value Co-Creation Forum (Enyu¹ Forum)” as a framework that can be utilized by those who want to open themselves to new perspectives and solve social issues. This framework will consist of (1) a forum for experts not only from the business world, but from a diverse range of disciplines including academia and the arts to gather for cross-disciplinary discussions aimed at discovering solutions to various social issues and (2) a STEAM²-based talent development program aimed at developing next-generation talent with broad perspectives and the capability to discover new value. With the support of the University of Tokyo’s Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology³, the association aims to recruit a wide variety of members and expand this framework on a global scale, both as a new type of industry-academia collaboration between corporations and academic and artistic fields working to create value and as a value creation platform from Japan that encourages the creation of value by bringing together intelligence and sensibility.

The issues our current society faces are interconnected in complex ways and cannot be solved by any one company on its own. To take on such issues, we must bring together the diverse values of a variety of stakeholders and look at the issues from a variety of perspectives. With this in mind, the Social Value Co-Creation Forum will collaborate with experts with diverse values and perspectives from both the business world and from academic fields—including not only science and technology, but also the arts, philosophy, and more—to bring together intelligence and sensibility, expand creativity and imagination, and generate new ideas, ways of thinking, and innovation, thereby contributing to society through initiatives to create social value.

1: Enyu is a philosophical term to describe the limitless connections that tie together all things in this world. The Enyu Forum brings together diverse perspectives and values that transcend the borders of discipline or field of expertise and generates new value through dialogue.

2: STEAM education is an approach to learning that encompasses the fields of science, technology, engineering, the arts, and mathematics to foster not only the acquisition of knowledge, but also creativity and problem-solving skills.

3: The Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology has hosted the Koyasan Conference, which brings together experts in diverse fields such as science, the arts, and philosophy to engage in discussion in view of the world of 1,200 years in the future, since 2021, and has co-hosted the Youth Koyasan Conference, a STEAM-based talent development program, with JERA since 2024.

 
Overview of the New General Incorporated Association