New products and innovations are the essential lifeline of each and every company. Older products usually have to face deteriorating prices, fierce competition from emerging markets, threats from new legislative regulations, and a loss in market share to new and advanced products. To keep market shares and to survive as a company, a continuous pipeline of innovations is a necessity now more than ever before.
However, in-house R&D is rather expensive and, in many cases, focuses only on incremental developments of existing technologies rather than on completely new solutions. In addition, given organizational structures and complex decision-making processes in bigger companies limit the flexibility and creativity of R&D departments.
As a solution, many companies have started to look outside their own premises over the past decade to find new solutions, technologies, and eventually innovation. Strategies like “technology scouting,” “open innovation,” or “technology M&A” are clearly successful in obtaining new, innovative products and processes.
“ We had been presented from the outside with approaches our best
and year-long experts in the area had not thought to be possible.”– Dr. Peter Nagler, Former Chief Innovation Officer, Evonik Industries
Without doubt, Japan is still developing high technology in many areas. Robotics, battery technology, and iPS stem cell research are just some of them, where Japanese companies and universities are at the forefront of the development. However, a perceived opaqueness of the market, language barriers in communication, and publication of technology developments makes it difficult for many foreign companies to find and benefit from Japanese inventions.
San-Ten Consulting wants to provide you with the possibility to participate and benefit from technology developments and innovations in Japan. Along the value chain Discover – Connect – Retain, we will support your technology scouting activities as well as the search for promising investment targets for your (corporate) venture capital operations.
With our substantial network to leading universities, (governmental) institutions, and startup ecosystems, as well with our technology background, San-Ten Consulting can effectively support your Technology Scouting activities in Japan. We can discover important technology developments and startups to help filling your innovation pipeline and venture capital portfolio. After connecting you to the R&D institutes, spin-offs, or startups, we will be here for you to negotiate licenses and technology transfer. Together with our financial partner, we also support your (corporate) venture capital investments by searching for suitable consortium partners and can represent your interests on the board of the portfolio companies.
In addition to startups and academia, small- and medium-size companies (SMEs) are the backbone of Japan’s industry and still a very relevant part of the innovation system. San-Ten Consulting can discover SMEs with interesting new technologies and connect you to cooperation partners that also might become potential acquisition targets in a later stage. Furthermore, anonymous monitoring of competitor developments is also an option.
If you are interested in more detailed information, please contact us without hesitation.