Fujifilm CDO Seigo Sugimoto: AI-era CDO builds the company OS

Sugimoto's path to the CDO seat runs through information engineering: he joined in 1989 and has worked consistently on system development and AI research, and he now carries the CIO and CISO roles alongside the CDO title while driving change across the group. One effort that illustrates his approach is the common platform built to merge the technology foundations of Fujifilm and Fujifilm Business Innovation. The two companies brought different organizational cultures and technology stacks, and he says the way through was a belief that "if we talk, we can understand", listening to frontline voices and steering them toward a shared goal.

That same organizing idea — understand the other side's problems and position, build cooperation through empathy — is echoed in how he frames AI adoption. The group started by giving every employee a shared platform they could use safely, backed by thorough guidelines and education, and only then went company-wide. In his telling, the result is now visible in daily work: meeting summaries, information gathering, idea generation and more, with an eye on both productivity and the quality of output.

The stakes hinge on whether that foundation holds as the group leans on data as an asset, information security, AI governance and trust. For other large organizations, the read is that the harder part may not be picking a model but judging which technology truly fits — a call Sugimoto frames as a source of corporate value, and one that only time and continued internal adoption will test.