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September 10, 2020
Tokyo, Japan – Today, Sony Corporation (hereafter “Sony” or “the Company”) held its ESG/Technology Briefing for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2021 (FY2020).
Sony defines its purpose as to “fill the world with emotion through the power of creativity and technology,” and its management direction as “getting closer to people.” The Company explained the long-term perspective of its contribution to society and the global environment centered on “people,” as well as various initiatives in technology that will bring these to fruition.
Highlights from the presentation are available below. For further details, please refer to the related material from the event, which will be made available on Sony’s corporate website.
1. Technology-related Strategy and Initiatives
- “Technology” is one of the most important material topics that support Sony’s long-term value creation, along with “Employees”.
- Under the management direction of “getting closer to people,” Sony is working on technology that “gets closer to motivation of people,” that is, the motivation of creators and users.
- By further strengthening the collaboration between each business and corporate R&D, and deploying technology throughout Sony Group, an environment has been establiAbout 10% of R&D’s annual expenses of approximately 500 billion yen are used for corporate R&D, and this ratio is kept relatively constant every year from the perspective of financial discipline. Up to 5% of corporate R&D expenses are allocated to long-term basic research themes in order to flexibly respond to changes in trends in the medium to long term.
- Sony is actively carrying out personnel rotations in Japan and overseas. Sony promotes building a system with awareness of diversity and globalization, such as through establishing new overseas R&D bases in India and Shenzhen, China.
- Sony is contributing to entertainment and the safety and assurance of people amidst a “new normal” with its “3R technology,” which adds “Remote” to Sony’s strengths of “Reality” and “Real-time”. Specifically, Sony will strive to provide values with “3R technology” in a variety of fields, including virtual production, AI, imaging & sensing, and life sciences.
- Sony is contributing to the realization of a sustainable society through technology. In addition to the joint development of a satellite incorporating Sony’s camera system with the University of Tokyo and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), with the aim of creating new entertainment in space, Sony is also working on projects to monitor (sense) the global environment with high-performance and low-power consumption systems on chips (SoCs), AI tools, and low-power wide-area network (LPWA) technology to realize not only the coexistence of “people and people,” but the coexistence of “people and the environment that surrounds them “.
2. Environmental Initiatives
- Under its “Road to Zero” long-term environmental plan, Sony aims to achieve a zero environmental footprint by 2050.
- As of fiscal year-end 2019, Sony has reduced annual energy consumption of products, reduced greenhouse gas emissions at business sites, and expanded use of renewable energy under the medium-term targets “Green Management 2020,” which were set to be achieved by fiscal year-end 2020.
- Sony has formulated “Green Management 2025,” the medium-term environmental targets for the next five years. At the same time, the Company set climate change targets to be achieved by fiscal year-end 2035, which has been approved as a 1.5°C target of “Science Based Targets”.
- The newly establi
- Sony contributes to the global environment from a long-term perspective through various businesses and technologies that utilize decentralized sensing, such as mobility, intelligent vision sensors, and REON POCKET.
- *For further details of Green Management 2025 and the Sony Innovation Fund: Environment, please refer to the separate press release issued today.
3. Social Initiatives
- *For details of the Sony Global Relief Fund for COVID-19, please refer here.
4. Governance Initiatives
- As part of ongoing efforts to strengthen the group’s global management and corporate governance, Sony has further diversified the experience, expertise, gender and internationality of the members of its Board of Directors. Additionally, Sony provides further information regarding the experience and expertise of each Outside and Non-executive Director in its Corporate Report and Sustainability Report for the fiscal year 2020.
