Ever since pharmacist Rokusaburo Sugiura started selling photographic materials in 1873, marking the start of the Konica Minolta story, innovation has been at the core of the company. “In fact,” says Sarah Stone, Konica Minolta’s director for people and culture, “although we didn’t patent it, we even researched the selfie stick.”
Konica Minolta was formed from a merger between Japanese imaging firms Konica and Minolta in 2003. These days, the company is known as a provider of comprehensive IT services. It delivers consultancy and services to optimise business processes with workflow automation and implements solutions in the field of IT infrastructure and IT security as well as cloud environments. In January, the company was named one of the 2019 Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
“We are always looking at how things are evolving, and what the technologies are that we can bring to move the business forward,” says Stone. Crucial to this is Konica Minolta’s people. “We want them to generate ideas,” she says. “And we incentivise this.”
The company subscribes to an “open innovation” ethos, working closely with clients, partners and research facilities to develop new ideas and stay ahead of the curve. Its five global business innovation centres (BICs) have been set up to gain a deeper understanding of customer needs and to support everything from small enterprises to multinationals.
Konica Minolta has also been recognised by the Top Employers Institute for its exceptional employee offerings in areas such as learning and development, talent strategy and leadership development. This has obvious benefits to the business and its innovation output, says Stone, as well as its corporate social responsibility (CSR) offering. She mentions one candidate who took the idea of the augmented reality app genARate and applied it to the Big Issue, enabling the magazine to offer interactive stories through the app as well as allowing merchandise purchases. “This is such a great example of how we encourage individuals in the business to make a real difference,” says Stone.
Konica Minolta continues to build on its tech innovations in the recruitment process, too. “Right from identifying the correct candidate to digitising the onboarding process and the welcome process, we are continually working to automate processes.”
Candidates are offered workplace flexibility and an agile working environment as well as bespoke leadership development and mentoring using the Konica Minolta leadership framework. All recruits are invited to join the company’s technology innovation programme, which enables employees from different companies and functional backgrounds to come together in a six-month programme to solve business challenges. Elsewhere, the Konica Minolta international university contest, open now, is asking students to propose an innovative alternative to a current document or information process at their university. Initiatives such as this, says Stone, encourage innovative cooperation between the worlds of academia and business.
Partnerships are important for innovation, says Stone. As well as the Big Issue, the company is working with football club Queens Park Rangers, whom it sponsors, to help improve the customer experience. This ranges from providing interactive fun for kids to bringing information to life for adults, offering sponsors better marketing opportunities and improving ways in which a supporter can buy goods from the club shop, she says.
The company is also working closely with educational partners to improve diversity in UK schools by delivering workshops and lectures to encourage, for example, girls to consider Stem careers. “We know our own diversity is not what we want it to be,” says Stone, “so we’re very focused on building awareness, supporting girls in school and generating excitement among young women.” This, she says, is crucial to strengthening the talent pipeline. Konica Minolta established a women’s network in 2015 to focus on career development and encourage more women to consider working at the company. It also works with charity partners, including mental health charity Mind, raising awareness of mental health issues in the workplace and supporting the charity through tech.
“The world is constantly changing,” says Stone. “And the skills of the future are going to be very different. We know that the current lifespan of a skill is around two and a half years so it’s crucial that we keep our people moving forward, as this is what keeps the business moving forward.”
