There have been personnel changes at Konica Minolta Business Solutions recently, and the venerable OEM moved quickly to shore up its leadership structure with several promotions, including Jason Dizzine’s elevation to vice president, portfolio management and planning. With Dizzine offering more than 20 years of industry experience, including stints with Ricoh and Kyocera, Konica Minolta saw an opportunity to also leverage the success he’d recently enjoyed in guiding the company’s high-value Client Engagement Center (CEC).
We chatted with Dizzine for a Two-Minute Drill segment to discuss his expanded product segment oversight, the importance of production print and his leadership style. We also have a spoiler alert in the final question that speaks to his work ethic and value in the organization.
Congratulations on the promotion. Tell us a little about how your role with Konica Minolta will expand.
Dizzine: Thanks so much. When I joined Konica Minolta in 2019, my main focus was to manage the team and operations at our Client Engagement Center (CEC) located at our corporate headquarters in Ramsey, New Jersey. I was asked to work closely with the production and industrial print product teams on our CEC strategy, processes and day to day operations. Based on my product marketing experience, it was a great opportunity to work with product teams on collecting the important voice of customer and voice of field information to help drive portfolio decisions and development, working together with our parent company in Japan. Part of this work led to me taking responsibility for our production toner (sheetfed) portfolio management team. This latest announcement now places me in the position to lead our hardware portfolio across all of our segments including A3/A4, production toner, wide-format, packaging and labeling, and industrial print.
The field of production print continues to grow. What will it take for Konica Minolta to retain a leading position in this space, and how do you envision making that happen?
Dizzine: I believe there are a good handful of areas that will help maintain not only our leadership position in the market, but help us continue to be a trusted provider and consultant to our PP and IP customers. Obviously the focus on our hardware portfolio will continue. As I mentioned previously, we have this great funnel of information from our customers that we collect every day at the CEC. We use this information in the spirit of continuous improvement to work with our development teams on not only future products, but also how it can be used to improve current products and solutions. We will continue to invest in areas we know are important to our customers, such as automation. We will build off our strong offerings around labor reduction and automation to improve how our customers use our technology in more productive and innovative ways. This ties in with our world-class service and support organization, which is constantly investing in new ways to support our customers—including AI and automation. I firmly believe we will not only continue to remain a leader in this space, I believe we will find new areas to grow and provide new applications and value to our customers.
You’ve previously had product marketing and planning roles with Ricoh and Kyocera. Does this perspective provide a competitive advantage? How can you leverage your background to Konica Minolta’s advantage?
Dizzine: I have been lucky enough to gain some great experience throughout my career. I’ve learned a tremendous amount about our industry and had some great mentors. I‘ve been able to experience different cultures and management styles and mold my own style over the years. I think one advantage over the years was being asked to lead different organizations such as marketing communications, strategic partnerships and of course product marketing and management. This experience can help me and my teams work closely with other organizations in Konica Minolta to get the best possible results we can. Now I am super excited to work with and learn from our leadership team here at Konica Minolta. My experience with the culture and leadership teams here has been amazing. I really look forward to the future here.
Not to spoil our upcoming announcement, but you’re a 2024 ENX Magazine Difference Maker. How critical is ‘going the extra mile’ in your work?
Dizzine: I am really proud of this upcoming announcement. Being named one of this year’s Difference Makers really aligns me with some of the great leaders in our industry and I am proud to be mentioned in the same light as them. I think going the extra mile is one of those key factors for success here, and one of the first things I noticed is that this mindset is pretty standard at Konica Minolta. Leading the CEC over the past three years has proven that going that extra mile with our sales team and customers simply makes a difference. We get to build such amazing relationships with our sales teams and customers in the process. When I took over the operations here at the CEC, I was so impressed seeing that the staff and product teams lived this mentality every day. One team working together to do whatever it takes to make sure they help our internal and external customers. This was the rock-solid foundation I had to work with. I’m really proud of the team and surely do not take them for granted!
