Bridgestone Innovation Park Commenced Full-Scale Operation for Creating New Value through Innovation

• Bridgestone Corporation announced that it has started full-scale operation of Bridgestone Innovation Park, its new global innovation hub in Kodaira City, Tokyo, with the opening of an innovation center, the "B-Innovation," and a proving ground, the "B-mobility."
• Bridgestone encourages further interaction with empathy among various stakeholders, promotes co-creation, and thereby accelerates innovation to realize and support a sustainable society based on the "Bridgestone E8 Commitment."
• To maximize each employee's performance while promoting innovation through co-creation, Bridgestone is driving the integrated transformation of both workplace and workstyle including enhancing engagement.

Tokyo (April 21, 2022) ― Bridgestone Corporation today announced that the company has started full-scale operation of Bridgestone Innovation Park, its global innovation hub located in Kodaira City, Tokyo, following the opening of two new facilities: the B-Innovation, an innovation center, and the B-Mobility, a proving ground. Bridgestone Innovation Park is a multifaceted facility designed to promote interaction with empathy among various stakeholders about Bridgestone's history and its vision toward 2050, cultivate the relationships through co-ideation and co-R&D, and then realize co-creation of new value. Based on its corporate commitment, "Bridgestone E8 Commitment,"^*1 the Bridgestone Group will accelerate innovation of its technologies, business models, and designs through co-creation at Bridgestone Innovation Park. The Group thereby will continue to contribute to the realization of a sustainable society, together with employees, society, its partners, and customers.

In Kodaira City, Tokyo, Bridgestone's Tokyo Plant was established in 1960 and a technology center was built later in 1962. These facilities as a core of R&D and production of the Group, were shaped to support to the motorization in Japan, contribute the development of regional community and have evolved together with it for more than half a century. The company has redeveloped these facilities as a new innovation hub, "Bridgestone Innovation Park," and opened the Bridgestone Innovation Gallery in November 2020 as a first step.^*2 This facility is meant to serve as a new venue for interaction with empathy between the company and its customers, stakeholders, and society by introducing Bridgestone's history, DNA, business activities, and initiatives for the future.

The new B-Innovation and B-Mobility facilities were established to encourage further interaction among internal and external stakeholders and promote co-creation based on the empathy fostered at Bridgestone Innovation Gallery and thereby accelerate innovation. B-Innovation is an innovation center that contains such areas as the "Bridgestone Open Innovation Hub," where people can view and engage with core Bridgestone technologies and products with the aim of giving rise to new ideas. Other areas at B-Innovation include the "Rough Prototyping Studio" in which machine tools can be used to give shape to ideas，and the "Co-creation Office" open to external partners. B-Mobility, meanwhile, is a proving ground^*3 which can be used to quickly experience and evaluate the performance and potential of prototype mobility technologies and products.

Bridgestone promotes more agile R&D activities by repeating the process of developing and testing ideas immediately with the combination of its strong "Real" and "Digital," such as its rubber mastery skills and craftsmanship fostered since its foundation and latest simulation technologies. The B-Innovation and B-Mobility will make it possible based on co-creation with various partners.

Furthermore, Bridgestone adopts an Activity Based Working (ABW) approach at Bridgestone Innovation Park that enables each employee to freely design their own personal workstyle no matter when, where, and with whom they choose to work. At the same time, the company is driving the culture transformation to realize both "each employee's growth and happiness" and "growth of Bridgestone," valuing each employee who takes the initiatives in work activities. Bridgestone will be making the most of the Bridgestone Innovation Park that encourages interactions among various technologies, information, and people by transforming workstyles as well as its workplace. That will maximize each employee's performance and promote innovation through co-creation.

In its tire business (core business), solutions business (growth business), diversified products business, and exploratory business, the Bridgestone Group is promoting co-creation with various internal and external partners across the value chain. Based on its corporate commitment, "Bridgestone E8 Commitment,"^*1 the Group is committed to realizing and supporting a sustainable society, together with employees, society, its partners, and customers by utilizing the Bridgestone Innovation Park, its new global innovation hub for promoting co-creation based on empathy and creating new value.

*1 The Bridgestone Group newly established its corporate commitment, the "Bridgestone E8 Commitment" to realize its vision: "Toward 2050, Bridgestone continues to provide social value and customer value as a sustainable solutions company." This commitment will serve as the Group's axis to drive management while earning the trust of future generations. The "Bridgestone E8 Commitment" consists of 8 Bridgestone-like values starting with the letter "E" (Energy, Ecology, Efficiency, Extension, Economy, Emotion, Ease, and Empowerment) that the Group will commit to creating through Bridgestone-like "purpose" and "process," together with employees, society, its partners and customers to realize a sustainable society. https://www.bridgestone.com/corporate/news/2022030101.html

*2 For more information regarding Bridgestone Innovation Gallery, please refer to the following website (areas of Bridgestone Innovation Park other than Bridgestone Innovation Gallery are not open to the public). https://www.bridgestone.com/corporate/innovation_gallery/

*3 More diverse and precise tests for achieving practical application of mobility-related technologies and products are performed by professional test drivers at Bridgestone proving grounds. For more information, please refer to the following website. https://www.bridgestone.com/technology_innovation/proving_ground/