Question

what does drive fuji film company to innovate ?

Answer 1

For more than eight decades, the name Fujifilm has been synonymous with quality imaging. However, in keeping with its tagline “Value Through Innovation”, the company has grown and stayed relevant by remaining ahead of the curve when it comes to technology and has evolved from being a manufacturer of film to building state-of-the-art devices across the fields of Medical Systems, Photo Imaging Products, Electronic Imaging and Optical Devices, Industrial Products Recording Media, Graphic Arts.

Fujifilm is known and trusted by graphics professionals across the world for providing reliable and convenient solutions that raise productivity and quality. Fujifilm’s solutions have been offering solutions for the print and packaging industry. The company maintains direct contact with consumers through its extensive sales network in India, which is reaching out to onboard new partners and consumer segments such as digital and wide format presses.

Founded in 1934, Fujifilm had an almost complete monopoly on film in Japan for several decades with more than 70% market share. Then in the 1980s, digital imaging technology began to register as a credible threat to the company’s traditional business. They weighed the possibilities and chose to try their best to pivot and embrace change, rather than fight against the tide.

Fujifilm quickly released the world’s first digital camera in 1988, the FUJIX-DS1P. It was absolutely revolutionary, storing images on a semiconductor memory card.

However, it was also prohibitively expensive, and personal computers hadn’t yet advanced to the point of letting people do their own photo editing. So the cutting-edge camera didn’t exactly sell like hot cakes.

Moving forward into the 1990s, Fujifilm’s conventional film business actually continued to grow. Analog film products were getting better and cheaper while digital tech moved in fits and starts.

As a consequence of traditional photo film’s continued, and oddly enough, increasing, profitability, management began to discredit the magnitude and speed of the digital threat.

By the end of the 20th century, Fujifilm eclipsed Kodak as the market leader in film and 2000 was the year that global demand for film products reached its all-time peak.

But despite the milestones, the company’s forecasting predicted turbulent times ahead—a contracting market for film and the end of a long era of massive profitability.

Then all at once, in 2003, the digital tide finally hit hard. Two-thirds of the company’s traditional business was wiped out. Once popular film kiosks quickly went from processing 5,000 rolls of a film a day (on average) to 1,000 or less.

While Kodak has always been a consumer brand with a strong technology base, Fujifilm was more a technology company with an above industry-average R&D spending which sold also into consumer markets. Because of this difference it seems logical that Kodak tried to fulfill the user needs of their customers based on the additional possibilities of the new digital imaging technology and Fujifilm in opposite tried to find new applications for their existing technologies. This change process has been named “second foundation”.

To execute the second foundation the top-management of Fujifilm in 2004 set up a mid-term management plan called Vision 75 targeting the next 5 years until Fujifilm’s 75th anniversary. In this plan several core growth fields haven been defined that should spearhead Fujifilm’s future development. The proclaimed fields have in common that they build on the technological competencies of Fujifilm. For making photo sensitive films and paper – Fuji Photo Film’s core products – Fujifilm had to build-up word-class material technologies, namely “functional compound molecular design, chemical reaction control and organic synthesis technologies” . In order to realize the potentials existing in the broad technology base of Fujifilm a traditional innovation process has been utilized. Based on an in-depth analysis of the existing technological capabilities ideas for future growth fields and corresponding products & services have been identified and evaluated.

Similar to this innovation Fujifilm decided to look into other future growth markets and decided to research its possibilities in the area of “Life sciences”. In this area Fujifilm could leverage its “Formulation, Targeting and Delivery” (FTD) technology together with its library of over 200.000 chemical compounds as well as synthesis and analysis technologies to identify products in the area of skin care as well as nutritional supplements. Especially for the skin care products Fujifilm could benefit of its know-how in photo-film materials

Consequently Fujifilm developed the Astalift and Nanofilt series. While Astalift is the anti-aging cosmetics series with nine products from cleansing, liquid soap and lotion over whitening essence, cream and day protector to a beauty drink and a dietary supplement, Nanofilt has been positioned as basic skin care series with five different products. For the Astalift series Fujifilm highlights the benefits of Astaxanthin a natural substance extracted from algae. Additionally Fujifilm launched two further dietary supplements, namely Oxybarrier and Metabarrier. While the first one is meant to increase the energy level of his user, Metabarrier is meant to help to loose weight by intensifying energy consumption.

Although Fujifilm has a considerable knowledge in the health sector based on his long-term involvement in the medical imaging business it is quite a different business to develop and sell cosmetics and nutritional products. In order to acquire the necessary market know-how Fujifilm utilized two different strategies. On the one hand side the shift towards the health care business was complemented by a major acquisition in 2008. In that year Fujifilm acquired the pharmaceutical company Toyama Chemical for approximately $1.4 bn with the target to generate revenues of over 1 trillion Yen in around 10 years. This acquisition helped Fujifilm to acquire competencies in drug development, accreditation and sales. On the other hand Fujifilm teamed up with another big player in the health sector and formed a strategic alliance with General Electric.

Besides its moves into new business fields Fujifilm continued to drive innovation in its traditional imaging business. Here Fujifilm is focusing on expanding the life-span of its colour paper by creating additional new products like writeable paper for calendars on silver-halide photo paper. These investments and innovations show that Fujifilm wants to continue the imaging business and uses innovations to differentiate in the market place