QED founder Fujita: Success = integrity + connecting the dots

Updated 7:53 a.m., July 14, 2010.

Hiroyuki Fujita is connecting the dots.

The founder, president and chief executive of Quality Electrodynamics LLC, better known as QED, in Mayfield Village, Ohio, adopted the metaphor for business success from Steve Jobs, co-founder and CEO of Apple Inc.

The metaphor stuck with Fujita because it depicts his entrepreneurial journey, although he also has another way of putting it. “My philosophy has been, ‘One step at a time,'” he said. “What I mean by that is, unless you give your best shot today, forget about tomorrow.”

That philosophy and several others drove Fujita to start QED — designer and maker of advanced coils and electronics for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines — in 2006 during a one-year stint as director of imaging physics at Case Western Reserve University.

In five short years, QED has gained more than $3.85 million in development grants, 60 employees, a 27,000-square-foot manufacturing facility and 2009 revenue of $12 million.

It’s also gained a lot of attention for Fujita. Last  year, Forbes magazine chose QED as the highest-ranked medical device company on its America’s Most Promising Companies list. And last month, Fujita was named regional 2010 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year (pdf) in the category of Northeast Ohio industrial manufacturing.

What does Fujita say about the attention? “I am honored,” says the man who dreams about building QED to the size and importance of Japanese manufacturers Kyocera, Panasonic, Sony or Honda, leaving the company as a legacy to future generations of Northeast Ohioans.

Born in Osaka, Japan, in 1966, Fujita was educated at Waseda University in Tokyo — one of the best private universities in Japan — putting him on the road to business success. But that road was too narrow. “As a young person, I wanted to do more,” he said. “I wanted to do something completely different. But in Japan … they tend to reject the idea of ‘completely new.'”

In 1987, Fujita studied at the University of California, San Diego. “I was shocked,” he said. Some students were doing double majors; some, triple majors. And those majors were completely unrelated. “If you are willing to do it, you can do it,” he said of the American university. “In Japan, you can’t.”

So he decided the United States was for him. Fujita joined the Case Western Reserve physics department in 1992, completing his Ph.D. in 1998. “Hiro is one of the finest people I’ve ever met,” said Cyrus Taylor, a physics professor who is director of the university’s Institute for Technology Innovation, Commercialization and Entrepreneurship. “He has a superb intellect, superb analytical abilities as a scientist.”

A year before his graduation, Fujita started working as a staff scientist for Picker International, the Cleveland manufacturer that had been an x-ray innovator in the 1930s and 1940s, and later developed MRI technologies.

Fujita was driven to do more, so he took a job as research and development manager at USA Instruments, a maker of radio frequency coils for MRI machines in Aurora, Ohio, in 2000. That’s where Fujita connected his first dots at Toshiba Medical Systems of Japan and Siemens Healthcare of Germany — both important QED customers.

Two years later, GE Healthcare bought USA Instruments. The General Electric Co. unit was a “wonderful training opportunity” in international business relations, Fujita said. “That’s where I was trained to have a big mind.”

“Dr. Fujita has a high level of personal integrity with a strong focus on people inside and outside of the enterprise,” said Walter Maerzendorfer, CEO of Siemens AG’s Magnetic Resonance Business Unit, in an email. “He is an excellent multicultural integrator active around the globe.”

Still yearning for more, Fujita went back to Case in 2005 as director of imaging physics. That’s where he started QED. “I always wanted to start my own business,” he said. “I knew this opportunity was ‘it,'” he said. “I must do it.”

By the end of its second year, QED had its first MRI coil designs, regulatory clearance to sell the coils, development money from Toshiba and Siemens, 11 employees and a temporary location. Today, QED is a growing company with 60 employees from all over the world who are working on their second major product line, this one in renewable energy.

“He is fundamentally an entrepreneur,” said Barbara Snyder, president of Case Western Reserve University. “He started with some great ideas about how he could make something that’s very important to medical diagnostics and treatment a lot better.”

Yet, he also is a business strategist. “What really strikes me is that he is one of the rare people who can be personally engaging and yet fully engaged in the business modeling that is critical to growing an organization,” said Mayor Bruce Rinker of Mayfield Village.

And he’s financially astute. Fujita has built his company not with investor money or bank debt, but with nearly $4 million in development grants.

QED recently won a $1 million grant from the Ohio Third Frontier project to work with Case Western Reserve and Siemens Healthcare to develop high, multi-channel radio frequency coils for knee and breast imaging that are optimized for the latest generation of imaging instruments.

“He’s very strategically focused on the next opportunity,” Snyder said. “And he’s been willing to take some risk.”

Fujita has been influenced by Kazuo Inamori, founder of Kyocera, the global technology company, who he met six years ago and considers a mentor. “I felt his energies,” Fujita said. “His belief is he works to pursue what’s right for mankind.”

Fujita is involved with the Inamori International Center of Ethics and Excellence at Case Western Reserve. “Dr. Fujita strives to build a business that benefits his employees, keeping mindful of the tireless contributions they make toward developing QED into a world-class company,” wrote Akihiko Fujii, deputy consul general of Japan in Detroit, in an email.

Fujita works to pursue what’s right for his family, his business associates and his community. “I want to do the right thing just as a human being,” Fujita said. “Integrity … is belief in doing the right thing.”

Living with integrity is simpler than what is taught in business school. “Treat people the way you want to be treated,” he said. “Make correct decisions. Don’t cut corners. Joy to me is having all these colleagues who believe the same thing.”

He also has built the company with strong customer relationships, notably, with Siemens Healthcare and Toshiba Medical Systems — two of the world’s largest magnetic resonance image machine makers.

“I have known Dr. Fujita for many years, and I can guarantee he is a capable and responsible business person who keeps his promises at all costs,” wrote Satoshi Tsunakawa , president and CEO of Toshiba Medical Systems Corp., in an emailed response to a reporter’s questions. “He has very high ethical standards, and he will always try to go the extra mile to create a win-win situation for all related parties.”

Fujita keeps more than a half-dozen Rolodexes on his office desk, attesting to the importance of connections.

Deputy Consul General Fujii remembers advising Fujita more than a decade ago on his immigration status. “His modest and charming personality was immediately apparent to me,” Fujii said. “Even to this day, he remains grateful for this rather routine task, which speaks to the great value he places on developing and nurturing human relationships.”

Fujii’s conclusion? “Northeast Ohio and its emerging bioscience technology sector have a priceless asset in Dr. Hiroyuki Fujita, leading one of the 388 Japanese companies — employing over 56,000 workers — that call the Buckeye State their home.”