One fund, every division.

Great ideas were everywhere. A way to fund them was nowhere.

Dai-ichi Life, a Tokyo-based insurer with a global footprint, wanted its divisions worldwide to innovate together — uniting skills and resources to tackle shared challenges with solutions that could scale.

But good ideas were trapped by geography and org charts. Someone with a promising concept in one division had no way to find backing — or collaborators — for an idea that might matter to the whole group.

The talent was never missing. The mechanism was.

Ninety partnered with Dai-ichi Life to design and launch a first-of-its-kind innovation fund — a platform, not a committee.

• 01Opened it to everyone. Employees from any division could apply for seed funding to develop their ideas — no gatekeeping by rank or region.
• 02Funded exploration. Seed capital let teams explore new technologies and tackle emerging social challenges together, across borders.
• 03Built it to last. Designed as a repeatable platform Dai-ichi Life could run itself, year after year — not a one-off grant.

The fund launched in 2021 and hasn't slowed since.

This cross-border collaboration has proven the tangible value of Dai-ichi Life's commitment to innovation — and, in its VP's words, the sky is the limit for what the fund can unlock.