JR East's Takanawa innovation hub passes 200 members, as its Singapore base is folded into the same brand
JR East's co-creation platform at Takanawa Gateway City has passed 200 member companies and 85 live projects since opening last year — and this week it folded an existing Singapore base into the same brand, extending a model for filling new station-area floors with start-ups and R&D tenants rather than only shops and hotels.
East Japan Railway Company (JR East) said LiSH, the business-creation facility it runs inside Takanawa Gateway City in central Tokyo, has grown to more than 200 member companies and over 85 live proof-of-concept projects since opening in May 2025, according to a release posted to its newsroom on October 6. The company used the update to confirm a second move: from October 29, it is folding its existing Singapore base, One&Co Singapore, into the same brand as LiSH Singapore, carrying over that office's 82 member companies into the network built around its flagship station-area redevelopment.
LiSH groups its member projects into three areas, JR East said. In healthcare, members include the Tokyo University-linked sleep-tech start-up ACCELStars. In environment and agriculture, JR East's own farming subsidiary, JR East Toyosato Sousei, is developing biomass plastics made from rice by-products. In mobility and robotics, projects span humanoid robots and hydrogen-powered autonomous vehicles. A regional hub in Akita, opened in March 2026, has signed more than 50 members on the same model, the company said — Singapore is the third location to carry the LiSH name, and the first outside Japan.
Takanawa Gateway City is JR East's largest active redevelopment, built on the old Shinagawa freight yard and the site the company is counting on for decades of station-area income. The obvious way to fill a project that size is the standard department-store-and-hotel mix most Japanese landlords reach for. JR East is instead carving out part of its newest floors for a paid corporate-membership platform aimed at start-ups and R&D tenants — a bet that an innovation-hub brand is worth building and exporting in its own right, not just a retail sweetener. Repeating the model in Akita, and now rebranding an existing Singapore base into the same network, tests whether that holds beyond one flagship site, and it is the tenant mix the country's other big station-area landlords — Tokyu, Odakyu, Tobu — will be watching as they plan their own redevelopments.
What JR East has not published is how many of its 200-plus members hold long-term space inside Takanawa Gateway City, versus a lighter, membership-only tier — the detail that would show whether LiSH is filling floors or just building a database.