TOKYO, Japan and VENLO, The Netherlands, October 16, 2010—During his visit yesterday to the Dutch Municipality of Venlo, Canon Inc. Chairman and CEO Fujio Mitarai presented City Mayor Hubert Bruls with a gift: the Endowed Canon-Océ Chair in Business Services Innovation. The Endowed Canon-Océ Chair will be established at the Venlo campus of Maastricht University.
Canon, under its corporate philosophy of kyosei—living and working together for the common good—seeks to act as a good corporate citizen through contributions to society. By offering the city council the Endowed Canon-Océ Chair in Business Services Innovation, Canon wishes to promote innovation and knowledge development in the vicinity of Venlo, the home city of Océ, the newest member of the global Canon Group. The innovative power of Océ was one of the reasons why Canon made a public offer for the shares of Océ, a transaction completed in March 2010. Canon intends to finance the Endowed Chair jointly with Océ for five years. The name of the professor to be appointed to the Endowed Chair will be announced in due course.
The Endowed Canon-Océ Chair is a seamless fit with Océ's commitment to ongoing innovation. In 2007, Océ announced the launch of Document Services Valley, a knowledge center in Venlo where specialists develop new services related to documents. From its years of experience of working with customers, Océ knows that an organization spends about 10 euro cents on the printing of a document, and invests 90 euro cents in the management, storage, transfer and retrieval of a document. For this reason, Océ wishes to develop new services, whereby control of the overall document flow can be executed more efficiently and at lower cost.
The development of new services related to documents is an interesting growth market for the Canon-Océ combination. Océ is developing the worldwide implementation of these services with Canon.
In recent years, revenues from these services have grown structurally faster than revenue development from the sale of printing systems.
For the Municipality of Venlo, stimulating regional innovation and knowledge development has become a key priority. The Venlo city council is located at the heart of industrial Europe, close to the German Ruhr area, and in the center of a high-tech region with companies like Océ, Philips, DSM and ASML and technical universities such as Eindhoven, Leuven and Aachen.
"The Endowed Canon-Océ Chair is an important contribution to one of the top ambitions of the Municipality of Venlo to stimulate knowledge development in our region," said City Mayor Hubert Bruls. "It will certainly strengthen our top position in the Dutch national ranking of private R&D investments."
