Kenji Kobayashi, Managing Director, Canon
Canon has sustained a successful history of innovation, and we
continue to concentrate our resources and energies on identifying
and serving the future needs of our customers.
While every part of our business is constantly innovating, one
of our most notable assets differentiating us from competitors is
Canon Information Systems Research Australia (CiSRA). CiSRA is one
of a select few of Canon's R&D companies located outside of
Japan and notches up annual technology exports to Canon Inc of more
than AU$50 million.
CiSRA is an increasingly rare entity, as many of the other large
multinational R&D centres in Australia have closed down or
reduced their presence. This illustrates the difficulties of
remaining competitive with lower-cost regions but it also shows our
core advantage. We are in a unique position to attract and retain
talented employees who want to do long term research and have their
solutions implemented on a global scale. We are also able to work
directly with local customers to design customised solutions and
gauge user feedback.
CiSRA's primary objective is to continue to add value to Canon
by creating strong core technologies and strong patents. In order
to do this, our plan is to change our focus so that we are more
research-oriented. We are collaborating more and more with our
sister companies in regions such as the Philippines and India, and
while they do more of the short term development work we are
increasingly focusing on the creative side.
A key tool for CiSRA is a strong employee development program
making sure that employees have the right technical knowledge and
also the knowledge of how to protect the company's intellectual
property. Past successes include ZoomBrowser software, which is
included with every Canon compact digital camera sold worldwide,
and ultra-fast rendering technology used in imageRUNNER
multifunction devices.
