KONICA MINOLTA

ANNUAL REPORT 2016

Giving Shape to Ideas

Meet the Innovators

The BICs are all about changing technology and product-oriented companies into
market-oriented companies.

Yuji Ichimura
Executive Officer and Executive General Manager, Business Development Headquarters

Dennis Curry
Director, BIC Europe

Ekta Sahasi
Vice President, BIC United States

Konica Minolta has established a Business Innovation Center (BIC) in five major regions around the world, including Japan, Singapore, China, Europe and the United States. Each BIC is charged with a mandate to look into the future, combine innovative thinking and high technology, and apply it to new business potential. Yuji Ichimura, who spearheads the project from Japan headquarters, held a Q&A session with Dennis Curry of London-based BIC Europe, and Ekta Sahasi of Silicon Valley-based BIC United States.

Yuji Ichimura
Executive Officer and Executive General Manager, Business Development Headquarters

Profile

A visionary responsible for developing new businesses for Konica Minolta, streamlining existing subsidiaries and acquiring ICT services partners. Formerly launched transformational start-up businesses for a large global IT service vendor in North America.

Ekta Sahasi
Vice President, BIC United States

Profile

An ‘innovationist’ with extensive experience in driving corporate innovation and new business in emerging area. Ekta has had an impressive career at large corporations like GE, Ebay, Vodafone and has had profound impact on several Silicon Valley startups where she has held leadership roles.

Dennis Curry
Director, BIC Europe

Profile

A highly experienced executive in launching innovation programs, with a successful track record as CTO at NATO, and Global Director, Account Strategy & Enterprise Innovation for Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.

Q1
What is the thinking behind the hiring policy of BIC executive level staffing?

By bringing in top-notch innovators from outside of our industry,
we can leverage expertise and knowhow Konica Minolta previously did not have.

Ichimura
The aim of the BICs is to create innovative businesses that have never existed. As such, we decided to invite executives who have extensive experience in business incubation across a variety of industries. Also, we needed for each BIC leader to be steeped in the market of his or her region. This is why we recruited them locally.
Silicon Valley is the center of IT technologies and a lot of venture activities, investments and so on, so we wanted to be a part of it. Ekta’s background is in consumer-based technologies and business models, so I wanted someone who could bring those perspectives to Konica Minolta. Europe is especially good at standardizations, insight on social issues, and developing platforms to solve those types of challenges, so we needed someone who could provide perspective on those dimensions. Dennis brings us those perspectives from his background in large enterprises and complex organizations.
In Singapore we chose someone who is connected to the government and understands Asia at large, as regulations are frequently changed in order to make Singapore more valuable to other countries in the Asia-Pacific region. In China we needed someone on top of emerging Chinese business standards, in order to best orient Konica Minolta to the impending market potential there. We actually hired three experts to compete with each other, as I thought a competitive environment was the best way to leverage their individual capabilities and bring out the best in all of them.
In Japan I wanted to have someone who has done a lot of incubation and entrepreneurial activities, so we brought in a person who has founded two companies, developed them into successful enterprises and sold them, so he brings that buyout experience to our knowledge base.
So now our global BIC portfolio looks very good, and we expect to adjust it over time based on the activities and things happening within our customers or market. At the same time, each individual BIC may adjust their portfolio as market opportunities dictate. So altogether we can be efficient and effective in our BIC operations.
Sahasi
I have been very happy to participate in the global transformation that Konica Minolta is going through. It’s inspiring to be able to help the company write the next phase of its heritage. Having come from Silicon Valley, I wanted to bring a lot of the technological advancements that we are seeing there, and seeing how we can apply those to a company like Konica Minolta to help drive this change that they are embarking upon. The ability to have an impact at a global level, too, is what I found intriguing, plus the company’s recognition that such a transformation is necessary.
Curry
From a personal perspective, I was looking to do something very different, and the thing that impressed me about Konica Minolta was that there was a real clear intent, not just to transform itself, but more importantly, to do bigger and greater things for its customers. And the potential areas we were looking to move into were of great interest to me, so that was the main driving force, that we could make larger impacts for our enterprise customers. Ultimately what I would like to do is transform Konica Minolta in the marketplace, making it a company that is highly successful and one that provides the greatest value to its customers.
Sahasi
What I bring to the BIC is a combination of key best practices and success factors that are required for Konica Minolta to engage in this kind of a global transformation. I also bring in key insights on where the market is shifting and how companies are leveraging technologies to fuel the next stage of growth for themselves and deliver value to customers.
Curry
In my case, based on my experiences in very large companies, I work to bring the perspectives of many to a single point that can result in something that is very innovative and creative and has value. That is, focusing large organizations into smaller points that are going to result in significant value to the marketplace to customers and their shareholders.
Ichimura
We see a BIC’s business as the customer’s business. Many companies have technology innovation centers or even a technical center in Silicon Valley, but our model is that we have to innovate the customer’s business, and based on the new value or insights of the customer we develop the new business. And since 80% of our business is outside of Japan, it’s very important to have five regional Business Innovation Centers in strategic locations globally.

Q2
How did you build your BIC team?

We recruited people who are creative by nature, entrepreneurial, innovative, progressive and passionate.

Sahasi
When I built my team, passion was a core tenet, so I looked for people who were extremely passionate about having an impact and about making a profound change to a company that was going through this kind of transformation. One of the other things that I have a very strong belief in is creative destruction, so I also wanted people with a wide variety of backgrounds from large corporations to entrepreneurs who have had failed start-ups, and to bring them all together in the right framework for them to work together. To discuss and debate diverging ideas and then through that process distilling them down to something that could be meaningful for the company and then taking that forward aggressively.
Curry
We had a pretty open book and were very fortunate that our leadership wanted to create a team that was very diverse so it would give us options where we would go wherever was appropriate, where we found opportunities in terms of our business and customers. The story and the intent of the company is a very attractive one, which appeals to people who are creative by nature, entrepreneurial, innovative, and progressive. And although the main headquarters of BIC Europe is in London, we’re a global company so we can distribute our work to various facilities in the region. This distribution is very important as it allows us to leverage multiple perspectives and expertise.
Sahasi
BIC US is in Silicon Valley, the de facto innovation hub. So what we have done is taken advantage of everything it has to offer and created ecosystems around venture capitalists and start-ups in areas that we are interested in, and then leveraged a lot of our partnerships to drive our work as well as bring in top-tier talent. So, we are less distributed than Europe is from that perspective. Our business unit is on the east coast and we of course effectively work with them as incubations are taken forward into the market.

Q3
What types of projects are in development now at your BICs?

Robotics for the hospitality industry, and practical augmented reality oriented applications.

Sahasi
At BIC US one key initiative is with a partner named Savioke, which is specifically within the hospitality robotic space, to bolster operations by augmenting the services staff. It’s an offering that serves the hospitality vertical, the big hotel chains. We are resolving issues like, what are some novel services that can be provided that could be engaging for the customer, and in parallel how do we drive efficiency and cost reduction, as well as introduce differentiation among the hotel chains.
As we thought about the technology and why Konica Minolta might consider doing robotics, we realized there were a lot of synergies between what we do in our core business from the servicing side of the core technology perspective, and there was a lot of mutual interest to be in that space. So we look to pair that with what the hospitality sector is looking for and novelty aspect, and the ability to interact with robots to augment the hotel staff. This can drive efficiencies in terms of the services that can be delivered to the customer, which is our key challenge. To date we have got some successful deployments of Savioke robots in hotels in Silicon Valley.
Our goal is to have a firm understanding of how quickly his industry is emerging and how Konica Minolta may participate in robotics, and define for ourselves why the field makes sense for the company, where the company can contribute in the value chain through pilot programs, and in so doing, solidify our strategy and define our road map for the future.
An AR (augmented reality) application being worked on by BIC Europe. The program displays manuals on tablets and smartphones for automotive mechanics to improve the quality of the repairs
Curry
At BIC Europe we initially started looking at areas where we could extend content management and information displayed from static documents, and then started to focus on augmented reality as a sort of a neighbor to make those sorts of documents much more engaging, intuitive, and interactive, and in a way where one could quickly access information to enable people to make better decisions. But the really important thing is that it is not just the augmented reality as a platform or an application on its own, it’s how it connects with other assets and innovations we have within Konica Minolta, plus also within the marketplace. For example, we are collaborating with a partner in the field of automobile maintenance called Wikitude, very sophisticated maintenance, where instead of having numerous manuals, a device can actually visually detect what is being worked on, and output audio instructions.
Ichimura
This type of technology can make a non-professional worker perform like a professional worker.
Curry
Another thing is that it can also then connect directly to a supply chain. So once you recognized that you know you need it, it can go into the system and then you don’t have to take the time to go back and telephone somebody for that particular part. And beyond that, in the future, if additional help is needed a real technician can be accessed to answer questions.

Q4
What types of future-oriented projects are in development?

Advanced concepts and technologies for healthcare,
and for the future workplace.

Curry
BIC Europe is focused on creating platforms in various different areas that we think can be of value from one industry to another, and this includes looking into increasing our presence within healthcare. Konica Minolta has a very strong and growing portfolio in healthcare and especially the digitization of healthcare. For example, BIC Europe is seriously looking into inter-operative cancer detection, the enablement of surgeons performing an operation to be able to detect whether their procedures are working or not, or if all the cancer cells have been removed or not.
Often what happens is that there will be an operation and they will remove the element of cancer, but they may not remove enough, because there is always some delicateness about how much is cut away. And often in the case with breast cancer, prostate cancer, and stomach cancer, a sample must be taken, then it takes some time before it’s clear if there are additional cancer cells or not.
The new procedure will enable, during the process of operating, the detection in real-time of exactly how much to cut away and whether or not any cancer cells are left behind. This is a great thing to do for the wellbeing of all of us. So it gives us added drive to know that this sort of incubation could have such a big positive impact on humanity.
Sahasi
BIC US also focuses on healthcare, but something else that I would like to mention is, we have put a tremendous amount of effort into looking at what the future workplace looks like. Like the smart workplace, because fundamentally as the digital natives come to the workplace, the millennials, their expectations on how work gets accomplished and how they collaborate with their colleagues are different, and what they expect, on-demand anywhere, anytime, is having a profound impact on how workplaces will need to transform in the future.
So we have several incubations and initiatives and are looking to launch several of those in the not-too-distant future that gets at the heart of this issue in strengthening what the future of enterprises would look like with smart technologies to enable the future workforce to work in the fashion that they would like to work in. There’s a host of things that can be done with the technological advances that are driving this collaboration and change within an enterprise. And so Richard Taylor, President and CEO, Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A., Inc., and I are collaborating very closely on this smart workplace initiative.
Curry
I think you will find that the enablement of a place or office will be a key strategic driver for Konica Minolta in the future. In Europe we’re very interested on very similar topics and that is why we have some collaboration with BIC US going on there. But additionally, for us it is about the enablement of making better decisions during the day. That is, the transition through home to work to home, and how one can make better decisions with smart data and sophisticated analytics and even AI. But I think it is augmented intelligence through connected devices and what those connected devices can tell you or how they can help you make better decisions. That is another key area we will be driving forward.
Ichimura
The world and society we now live in is very complex, competitive and fast moving, especially in terms of digital platforms and systems. To change technology and product-oriented companies into market-oriented companies requires that we create new businesses based on the customer’s values instead of technology itself.