Hiroshi Kobayashi

Hiroshi Kobayashi is Corporate Executive Vice President and Director of Ricoh Company, Ltd., headquartered in Japan, and General Manager of the Corporate Technology Development Group. He has been the Chairman of Ricoh Software Research Center (Beijing) Co., Ltd. since 2009, and the Chairman of the Board of Ricoh Innovations since 2011. He was formerly President of Ricoh Innovations.

Kobayashi joined Ricoh in 1974, starting his career in technology planning in the R&D sector. He served as General Manager of technology planning shortly after the Research and Development Center was established in 1986, where he commercialized voice/character recognition. Kobayashi served as a leader of e-Cabinet on the Japan side, which was a collaborative development project with Ricoh Innovations and the first new business Ricoh started in Silicon Valley. Additional positions include General Manager of the Corporate Planning Division in 2002 and the Printer Business Group in 2004.

He is a graduate of Waseda University in Tokyo, with a Master of Science degree in applied physics.