Viewing sustainability management and innovation as inseparable elements, Meidensha Corporation believes innovation should aim to (1) bring disparate values together to create new business value providing solutions to issues of public concern, and (2) autonomously innovate our business model and portfolio in a forward-looking manner leading to sustainable growth.

Meidensha welcomes ideas from every employee, developing promising ideas into topics for future R&D projects while reviewing their feasibility, utility and other characteristics. Ideas that pass through the gate to the next stage are further developed into pre-commercialization phase projects. These activities are designed to uncover ideas that will grow into future business mainstays.

Creating a culture that gives roots to the seeds of employee ideas

Priority areas for innovation creation

Meidensha Corporation began innovation creation activities for all employees in FY 2021 as a way to make employees more mentally prepared for taking on the challenges of reshaping the world by looking ahead to 2030 and 2050. These activities consist of (1) creating innovation processes, (2) hiring and training innovative workers, and (3) finding new consumer needs and collaboratively creating ways of satisfying them.

Development and commercialization examples

Electrodes preventing destructive lightning strikes on wind turbine blades

Developing materials able to withstand electrical strikes

• Targeting winter lightning (high-energy type)

Functional device-driven coolers

Using new cooling structure to reduce transformer size

Meidensha Corporation works on open innovation as a way to create new business models and solutions, and provide them to clients. To develop seeds from ideas discovered by in-house calls for ideas, Meidensha is committed to bringing together inbound and outbound open innovation to become a company that can grow by creating and innovating business areas in a self-directed manner. Inbound open innovation acquires the required knowledge and technologies from outside organizations such as universities, research centers and startups. Outbound open innovation publicizes the Company’s core technologies and portfolio of expertise as a way to have them used by outsiders.