Business Weekly - Cambridge, UK

The Cambridge base has been running for one year and, as the nerve centre of Kodak’s European research operations, has been using its exposure to the region’s cutting edge innovation to feed its parent company with some of the latest breakthroughs in imaging technology.

Details of UK firms in the areas of consumer digital imaging, inkjet printing and OLED displays have been put to the corporate office and its partners in the US who are currently undertaking due diligence to assess the practicalities of partnerships and investment in the region.

A number of investment models are being considered, although Kodak remains tight-lipped regarding specific companies.

“We’ve looked at companies in all three areas, at how they can be part of our portfolio – whether they be serious collaborations, joint ventures, or significant investment in capital,” said Dr Sam Weller, head of the European research facility. Any of those might be appropriate for UK companies who are in that space.”

Kodak recently announced a new, all-in-one inkjet printer, which it says will reduce consumer costs by up to 50 per cent. While the technology wasn’t a product of Cambridge research, the presence of a world leading inkjet cluster and companies like Domino Printing Sciences and Xaar, indicate that future generations of the product could be.

“I’m sure Kodak will introduce new and different versions of this going forward and the research that we do in Cambridge on continuous inkjet may well find itself into continuous inkjet printing products,” said Weller.

As well as ground-breaking developments in the inkjet printing field, Kodak research strives to makes advances in display technology, an area in which Cambridge offers a wealth of innovation in the form of CDT, Plastic Logic, Liquavista and the University of Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory among others.

“Kodak has been producing flexible films for over 100 years so film technology and producing flexible displays clearly plays to our capabilities,” said Weller.

“We continue to look for and collaborate with other companies where they have alternative, intelligent ways of creating huge displays – the technologies that enable large OLED displays to be produced – and continue to be interested in how the flexible displays business is emerging.”

Kodak’s move to Cambridge has been a successful one, as the opportunities available there meet the company’s requirements as it moves away from traditional ‘darkroom photography’ into the digital age.

“We’ve chosen the right place to come to considering our company’s move to what everybody else calls open innovation.

“The traditional business was one where we would do internal research, completing most of the work ourselves with minimun collaboration.

“I think it is clear to say that as we focus we’re beginning to see how both our own internal research helps academic research and what other companies have can be useful to us.”

“In today’s digital transformation of the business that isn’t possible, nowadays we need to be collaborating with universities, other businesses and start up companies, and Cambridge is a good place to do that.”

Since moving to Cambridge in 2005, the company has spent its time establishing itself in the region, building relationships within the academic, financial and social environment in Cambridge.

Dr Weller said: “We created an environment for our staff that enabled them to do a lot more external interactions, looking for new technologies – companies that had new technologies that might be useful to us,, participating with venture capitalists, participating with the university.”

“The first year was always intended to be setting the right environ to focus and move forward, and as we move into the next year and focus more in particular areas, we’re more likely to interest our parent company in useful partnering propositions.”

Dr Weller feels that the most successful aspect of establishing the research facility in Cambridge has been the learning curve associated with such an innovative environment.

“I believe that as we learn more and more from the Cambridge experience and Kodak embraces its innovation, the learnings from here are being clearly introduced in other parts of our worldwide research organisation.”

“If I look back to the way it was when we were in our previous location, there is no comparison.

“We have significantly increased, by orders of magnitude, the number of opportunities that we have investigated.

“We have learnt how to filter those and move forward with the most important ones really quickly, something which big companies can’t always do.”