News Releases

Products & Services R&D Others

Konica Minolta to Create New Business Fields and New Business Opportunities through Supporting “Start-up Activities” as Sponsor of Pioneers Asia

Tokyo (March 18, 2016) - Konica Minolta, Inc. (Konica Minolta) announced it will be sponsoring Pioneers Asia, an event assembling global start-ups, as a Gold Partner. The event will occur in Tokyo between the 21st and 23rd of March.
Konica Minolta’s new service business development team, Business Innovation Center (BIC), will be exhibiting new services and development strategies from its Japanese regional office, BIC-Japan.

Purpose of Sponsorship

Konica Minolta focuses on identifying problems and gaining a deeper understanding the needs of both its markets and customers. Konica Minolta will be sponsoring this event with the aim of discovering promising start-ups and finding new opportunities through coordinated business development. Konica Minolta strives to implement Open Innovation in connection and collaboration with its partners who hold strengths in various fields, for the purpose of more quickly realizing the solutions to the problems of society.

About Konica Minolta Business Innovation Center (BIC)

Business Innovation Centers (BICs) have been established in 5 major regions around the world as the core engine of growth for Konica Minolta. The BIC’s mission is to gain a deeper understanding of its customers’ needs, to advance services, and to create new operations that are useful to both business and people’s lives. The BICs are closely collaborating with a diverse range of entities such as academic institutes, research institutes, start-up companies, and investors. As a result, they will not only deliver new value to the world, but also create and implement new and innovative ideas so as to contribute to a better society.

Konica Minolta’s Pioneers.io Initiative

“Pioneers Festival” is held once every year at Vienna, Austria, and is the largest “entrepreneurship, innovation, and future technologies” event in Europe. As a Global Partner (currently known as a Pioneers Challenge Partner) Konica Minolta has been sponsoring Pioneers.io since 2011. The event serves as a place to assemble start-ups from both in and outside Europe. Konica Minolta’s aim is to use this event to work collaboratively with new future-oriented technology and business start-ups to create new opportunities. This is the first time that Pioneers Asia will be held in Tokyo. Along with supporting this event, Konica Minolta is aiming to discover possible opportunities to work with start-ups so as to both drive innovation and create value for its customers. Through its Open Innovation initiatives, and also by adopting the viewpoint of its customers to offer services and solutions that provide increased value, Konica Minolta is working to both assure customer satisfaction and contribute to the realization of a better society.

For more information