On August 3, 2026, we held a talk event titled "From Research to Business, From Japan to the World: An Honest Conversation on Commercializing Research, Founding Companies Abroad, and Supporting Startups."The panel brought together Yosuke Niibori, who co-founded Re:Pair Genomics in Toronto and is developing AI-designed gene therapies; Daisuke Katagiri, who has founded and run a university spinout and worked as a venture capitalist, and who now leads startup support and entrepreneurship education at Chiba University; and Yoshiko Kanemoto, whose career at a pharmaceutical company spanned drug discovery research through the acquisition of a US company, and who now works on entrepreneur development at the University of Tokyo. Yumiko Namiki of DMZ Japan moderated.What does it actually take to turn research into a business? The three panelists, each coming from a different position and career path, spoke from direct experience.Building a company abroadNiibori's path to Canada started with a study abroad experience in high school. Living and working outside Japan suited him, and the idea of eventually moving abroad stayed with him.A professor he consulted at the time advised him to finish his degree first. Academic credentials carry more weight abroad than in Japan, and they change how you are treated. He followed that advice, completed his degree, and worked as a postdoctoral researcher in Japan before making the move."Looking back, I think I should have gone earlier," Niibori said. Language comes faster, and so does adapting to a new environment. "It is not just about speaking. Conversation is how you come to understand the culture."He had two destinations in mind, London and Toronto, and chose Toronto because it is multicultural and easy to live in. He got the position through a connection from his earlier time in that lab. "If you send a cold email asking to be hired, 95 percent of them never even get opened. So I started by building the relationship and getting myself remembered. You have to be the one who starts the conversation. It is the same when you found a company, and the same when you run experiments abroad. In the end, the person who speaks up wins."The reason he started a company was straightforward. "I had spent more than ten years working on viral vectors for gene therapy, and the promoter I wanted simply did not exist. It was not out there yet, so I decided to build it myself."Starting a business from a standing start is difficult, so Niibori turned to an entrepreneurship program at the University of Toronto. How to define what your company is worth, how to raise money, how to find partners. He covered the fundamentals and presented at a pitch competition at the end. That process gave him the push he needed to start.Where Japan stands in biotechIn life sciences, the large pools of capital are mostly held by US venture capital firms. Whether they can look at a technology and say the risk is legible determines how far a country's biotech sector can grow.Katagiri began with what is happening outside Japan."The country with the most momentum in Asia right now is actually China. About ten years ago, China moved its entire preclinical regulatory framework onto international standards. With such a large population, sample sizes come together quickly. As a result, US venture capital sees lower risk, and they can acquire a technology outright at an early stage."Japan, by contrast, often does not fully apply GLP, the international standard for safety testing of pharmaceuticals, and sample sizes remain small. "From a US investor's point of view, the risk has not come down at all."When that context is missing, the conversation drifts toward complaints that Japanese VCs will not write checks, and toward calls for more government grants. But that is not where the problem lies. "In North America, life sciences already operate as a global market. Science moves globally, so it matters that we look carefully at where Japan's own regulations stand."Katagiri also pointed to recent movements in Japan. Universities in the Tokyo area are working together to close the gap between basic research and commercialization in biotech and life sciences. Chiba University this year put in place both the structure and a dedicated facility for first in human trials. "If we just stand by and watch, we will find ourselves cut off from the rest of the world and behind. We have to take this on ourselves."How Canada designs the first stepAfter the discussion of regulation and talent development in Japan, the conversation turned to the state of the Canadian ecosystem. "In terms of talent, I do not think there are that many students who actually want to start a company," Niibori said.The difference, he explained, is not in how motivated students are. It is whether the mechanisms are within reach at the moment they decide to try."You cannot found a company and raise hundreds of millions of yen overnight. There are pitch competitions with prizes of half a million yen, and at higher levels five million or ten million yen. Having that kind of starting point close at hand is a real difference from the Japanese environment. Whether it exists or not changes everything."One competition in Montreal is open to anyone across Canada, and students can enter on their own without a professor involved. "That flexibility is a strength of the Canadian ecosystem." Toronto is also close to New York and Boston, and shares the same language, which makes it feasible to attend US conferences and raise money there.That said, the funding environment itself has tightened. "Five years ago you could raise on an idea alone. Now you need a product to put in front of investors. Only companies with a solid product are getting funded."From research to business: mindset and resolveThe deepest part of the discussion was the shift from research to business.For Kanemoto, the change was one of mindset. Working at a small company, she kept asking why larger firms were putting products on the market while hers could not. Research alone did not seem to be enough, so she moved into clinical development, closer to patients. Something still felt off, and when she was offered the chance to study management, she went abroad to do it.It was not what she expected. "Management is genuinely an academic discipline. They taught me economics, marketing, and various frameworks. But whether any of it helped the business, the answer was no."Her most useful learning happened outside the classroom. "The most important thing in moving from research into business was the long stretch of interviews I did with dermatologists in the US. That is where I learned to understand what is actually needed from the customer's point of view." At a small company, competing on cutting edge technology was not realistic. So she focused on niche strategy and on differentiating from competitors, thinking carefully about which patients she wanted to reach and with what, and doing the research to find out. That is where the path opened up.Researchers, by nature, concentrate on the research itself. When someone has a research background and also carries a business perspective, strong technology can find its way to market. "Mindset really does matter."Katagiri took a different angle. "I do not think there is much difference in the thinking process. A researcher sets their own problem and works backward to a solution. Business is the same. You find a problem in society and work out what is genuinely needed."So what is hard about it? "The hard part is whether you can make the decision yourself. I gave up my career as a researcher. I loved research, so that took real resolve. But once I had decided to focus on the business, it was not as difficult as I had expected. It is less about mindset than about resolve."Niibori was equally direct about how hard it is to do both. "The moment you start a company, advancing as a researcher is off the table. You cannot publish. Until the patent is filed, you cannot present even a small finding, because you never know which piece will turn out to be the seed of the business."Now on the support side, Katagiri finds that same point the hardest to handle. "When a professor tells me they will do the venture and keep publishing, I need them to decide on the spot. If they cannot, I do not offer half measures of support. It may sound harsh, but if nobody tells them the reality now, we end up half investing and everyone has a much bigger problem later."Kanemoto put it similarly. "When you change direction, you need to be prepared not to go back. Plenty of people do go back, of course. But taking on something new requires that resolve."What do you think about, and what do you have to decide, when you move from research into business? This was the part of the session where each of the three spoke from their own experience.Looking back on timingNamiki asked the panel what they considered most important, and what they would do differently looking back.Katagiri's answer was that he started too early. At the time, technology licensing offices, the mechanism for moving university patents to companies, had only just been introduced in Japan, and there were no funds and no incubation facilities."I launched three years too early. Three years in, the company nearly went under. Cash flow was a real struggle. If anyone here is thinking about founding a company, timing genuinely matters. Look at it carefully."Niibori's regret ran the other way. Early on, an investor approached him and he turned them down because he did not want to give up equity."Looking back, if I had taken it, things might have gone differently. I am the type who missed the timing. I think I could have moved two years earlier. If I had taken a more aggressive approach two years ago, I would be looking at a completely different future now."Kanemoto added a perspective from the support side. "Reading the timing is genuinely difficult. Whether anyone can really know what three years ago or three years from now looks like, I doubt it. So I tell the researchers I work with never to start a company until they can see where the money is coming from. There is a lot of public support available now, so use it to bridge the gap."For those about to raise money and startThe session closed with a question from a student in the audience who is planning to raise funding and start a company to offer an AI based service, and wanted to know where to look for capital in Japan and abroad.Kanemoto pointed to public programs in Japan. "There are frameworks supporting university originated startups all the way from Hokkaido to Kyushu, and if you are a student or faculty member at a participating university, you can access those programs at no cost. Funding to move research results toward commercialization is available in stages, and it does not have to be paid back."Niibori added a second option. "There are far more choices internationally. There are a number of international pitch competitions open to students. You win your regional round, advance to the world division, and take the prize. Some of those prizes run to around a hundred million yen. Each stage raises the level, so it is worth going for."Katagiri talked not about how to raise money but about where to compete. A friend of his who founded a company in Silicon Valley found that basing the business in the US meant it took off there without any advertising at all, and then spread to Spanish speaking markets. Today roughly 30 percent of revenue comes from those markets. "He told me that if he had done the same thing in Japan, it never would have spread to the Spanish speaking world on its own."That is why where you base the company and where you put the money makes such a difference. "If you seriously want to compete, you have to do it where you want to compete. Being Japanese has nothing to do with it. What matters is competing where the business actually is."The session started with knowing your environment accurately, how Japan looks to global investors and what mechanisms exist in Canada, and moved from there to what you decide once you know it. When you start something new, both matter: seeing clearly and then committing. The three panelists made that concrete through their own experience.DMZ Japan supports Japanese startups entering the Canadian market, and companies from around the world entering Japan. If you are interested in collaborating with Canada, we would be glad to hear from you.