KOSHIBA
MITSUNOBU

Director, JSR Corporation

To make JKiC a place of genuine open innovation

JSR Corporation has positioned life science related business as its third pillar. We, as a company will expand our superior material and quality technologies as well as our organizational ability in order to globally develop business in the life science field. To achieve this, we have gone beyond the materials business, which has been centered around our established unique materials, by strategically investing in KBI Biopharma (North Carolina State and Colorado State, U.S.) and Selexis (Geneva, Switzerland). Both companies possess manufacturing technologies and analysis technologies that are indispensable for manufacture biomedicines. We have also made a strategic investment in welcoming Medical & Biological Laboratories Co. (MBL) (Nagoya and Ina) to our group enterprise. MBL has both a wide range of diagnostic agent technologies and superior antibody manufacturing technologies. These investments have been positioned to contribute to the globalization of our life science business.

We hope that JKiC will grow to be a research institute that serves as a pipeline (loading new technologies) for JSR Corporation’s life science related business. Every enterprise must carry out exploratory and basic research to support its business. Needless to say, if you were to neglect such day-to-day efforts, your technologies will dry up and ultimately, you will lose your ability to compete in the market. The life science field is advancing, being driven by constant new discoveries. Keio University School of Medicine and Keio University Hospital are conducting cutting-edge research and achieve results at an international level. Transforming this storeroom of technologies, which can be called Japan’s treasure house, into value, or in other words, innovation, through JKiC is the role of JSR, and is also what Keio University expects from us.

Open innovation is a widely discussed topic, but few places actually manage to practice it. We are counting on JKiC to embody genuine open innovation. JKiC is not intended to become a closed research institute operated only for JSR and the Keio University School of Medicine and Hospital. In order to transform Keio University’s splendid technologies into innovations, it will most likely be necessary to have third parties intervene. These third parties could, according to circumstances, include our competitors. However, in order to achieve even greater success, we will actively work in collaboration with said parties.

JKiC is a three-story building with one basement, and the first floor will be wide open to students and other cooperating companies. We will invite global experts on the themes dealt with at JKiC to form an advisory body, which will manage progress and provide appropriate advice on JKiC’s activities.

In an age when Japan as well as other industrialized nations are being talked about as aged societies, the term “Quality of Life (QOL)” is being used often. JSR is determined to do all in its power to support the management of JKiC to enable it to maintain and improve QOL with its technologies and innovation, practice open innovation, and to become a research institute that attracts the world’s attention and respect.