Océ: the first big acquisition, and letting go of self-reliance (2009)

Rewriting self-reliance with its own hand

Canon’s strength has long been underpinned by self-reliance. Refining in-house the optical and precision-instrument technology cultivated in cameras, applying it to copiers and printers, and building even the mechanism for earning on consumables by itself — that consistent philosophy of in-house making was the driving force that built the world market for office machines. The acquisition of Océ amounts to a choice to let go of that philosophy, of its own accord, in the face of a changing environment. When markets mature and voids in growth widen, there are domains that the speed of in-house making alone cannot fill. The decision to buy the technology and sales channels another company had built up was not a repudiation of self-reliance but a realistic correction meant to protect it.

Whether the acquisition itself was a success cannot be measured simply. The Océ brand was absorbed into Canon, and commercial printing has not grown into a pillar of revenue to replace office machines. Even so, what this acquisition left Canon is large. The either/or thinking — grow it yourself or buy and absorb it — was opened into a thinking that uses both by turns. The M&A that followed, in Axis and Toshiba Medical, all lie on the extension of the road opened by Océ. When a company that had carried its proprietary technology through rewrote that banner with its own hand, Canon offered one answer to the question of where to seek its next growth.