The Activities of SHARP's R&D Centres Abroad

Abstract

Sharp's first R&D centre outside Japan was its basic research laboratory established in 1990 at the Oxford Science Park in the United Kingdom. It has a staff of thirty-five who conduct research in the fields of opto-electronics, artificial intelligence, and information and image processing; more specifically, current research is on semiconductor lasers, machine translation systems, and high-resolution printing systems. Three development centres were subsequently set up in the United States and Taiwan to provide technological support to Sharp's local production in these countries. Sharp has a policy of giving a high degree of autonomy to its R&D centres abroad. Further, Sharp seeks to establish relationships with universities or research centres to ensure the sucess of its own R&D centres. Besides contributing to global R&D efforts, Sharp expects that the technology developed by its centres overseas will also contribute to the enhancement of its R&D centres in Japan. Sharp's R&D facilities abroad are not classified according to the field of technology they concentrate on but rather by the level of research they perform. The host governments would prefer those facilities to perform advanced research. In line with this policy, Sharp's laboratory at Oxford will be alloted tasks beyond exploratory research to carry out actual research.