Just over one year ago, I was handed a key to an office shell in Silicon Valley and asked to build the US Business Innovation Center. As I was standing in the empty room, I knew I was at the beginning of what would grow to be a driving force of new business lines and opportunities for Konica Minolta. I also knew that these business lines would not be an extension of our legacy products, but solutions born from the needs of our customers, both existing and new.
The Business Innovation Center has groundbreaking ideas at its very core. This is evident since “innovation” is literally our middle name.
Since our creation a year ago, we have operated as a startup backed by the power and prestige of a global company, giving us the resources and organizational autonomy to bring disruptive technology to life.
PricewaterhouseCoopers’ “Breakthrough Innovation and Growth Report,” the largest and most comprehensive study of its kind, explored innovation from a global, multi-sector perspective.
The results show that the most innovative 20% of companies have already grown at a rate 16% higher than the least innovative. This means that, on average, each of the most innovative companies delivered a quarter of a billion dollars of additional revenue over the past three years, compared with the least innovative (Shelton & Percival, 2013). By interviewing more than 1,500 executives, PricewaterhouseCoopers found there was a clear correlation between innovation and growth. They isolated several key components to identify what the most innovative companies were doing compared to the least innovative. The report’s findings line up closely with the strategies of the Konica Minolta Business Innovation Center North America.