“City farming is not only possible, it is the very definition of the kind of meaningful, sustainable innovation we will need to meet the grand challenges of the 21st century: climate change; population growth; ageing population; urbanization; rising demand for energy, food and water; poverty; and access to healthcare.”
― Frans van Houten
“It is vital that a company’s culture shows a willingness to invest in employee wellbeing with no stigma or penalty attached to prioritising good health.”
― Frans van Houten
“With access to professional coaching and support around the clock, patients will feel more empowered to manage their own physical wellbeing.”
― Frans van Houten
“In Kenya, e-learning has taught 12,000 nurses how to treat major diseases such as HIV and malaria, compared to the 100 nurses a year that can be taught in a classroom.”
― Frans van Houten
“Growing and aging populations are putting increased pressure on health-care systems that are already buckling under the burden of chronic diseases like cancer and diabetes.”
― Frans van Houten
“Sustainable solutions based on innovation can create a more resilient world only if that innovation is focused on the health and well-being of its inhabitants. And it is at that point – where technology and human needs intersect – that we will find meaningful innovation.”
― Frans van Houten
“Crucially, healthcare needs to become connected. It should become effortless for medical professionals to share relevant data with colleagues around the world. Medical devices and systems in hospitals should be able to combine multiple sources of information.”
― Frans van Houten
“Time may not be on our side, but innovation is.”
― Frans van Houten
“As humans, we’ve always innovated our way out of problems, whether it was the first torch to light a dark cave or the steam engine that sparked a revolution.”
― Frans van Houten
“Genomics, Artificial Intelligence, and Deep Machine learning technologies are helping practitioners deliver better diagnosis and actually freeing up time for patient interaction.”
― Frans van Houten
“Our strategy is focused on driving better outcomes for patients and higher productivity for hospitals.”
― Frans van Houten
“Waste does not exist in nature because ecosystems reuse everything that grows in a never-ending cycle of efficiency and purpose.”
― Frans van Houten
“We typically sell a catheter lab to a hospital, and it sits there for the next 10 years, and we don’t visit the cardiologist on a daily basis. Volcano have a disposable business. They are in the cath lab on a daily basis.”
― Frans van Houten
“Government should seek more strategic approaches to developing dynamic, resilient infrastructure. Business must be more creative in offering financing solutions as partners with government, and people must support sustainable innovation as a public policy priority.”
― Frans van Houten
“Should one of your employees have a physical or mental health problem, I would argue that it is as much something for the employer as the individual to contend with.”
― Frans van Houten
“Concerns about the possible side-effects of connected care are swept aside by the expectations of the benefits when people are confronted with a chronic disease themselves. Resistance that could be privacy-related completely disappears.”
― Frans van Houten
“The agreement to acquire Volcano significantly advances our strategy to become the leading systems integrator in image-guided therapies.”
― Frans van Houten
“You can’t have a single design for all cities. The look and feel of the streetlights are very important.”
― Frans van Houten
“The traditional way that society looks at healthcare is to let people get terribly sick and then have an emergency room to take care of them and spend a lot of money on acute care for people who would have been kept out of hospital in the first place if they had had a lifestyle change.”
― Frans van Houten
“The global healthcare industry is undergoing a paradigm shift, providing significant opportunities for Philips to deliver more integrated solutions across the continuum of care – from prevention, diagnosis, and treatment to monitoring and aftercare.”
― Frans van Houten
“We undertook a huge internal transformation to sharpen our customer focus, step up innovation, improve productivity to ensure competitiveness, change our culture, and simplify our ways of working so that our size and scale became a competitive advantage rather than a bureaucratic hangover after years of diversification.”
― Frans van Houten
“Compassion, together with contractual responsibility for one’s workforce, is a mark of a top employer.”
― Frans van Houten
“Employers can assist employees in looking after their health by giving guidance on energy management, sleep and healthy eating, working relationships, and helping maintain a sense of purpose at work.”
― Frans van Houten
“What Philips has to offer to India is to further enhance the state of healthcare for the over billion people in this country.”
― Frans van Houten
“By innovating and investing in health technology, we believe that we can really change the future of health.”
― Frans van Houten
“Certain product categories become less attractive for us because, as they become mature, they become low-cost, and hence, there is less to invent. There is less to invent in a television, whereas in heath technology, there is a lot to invent. So we wanted to put our innovative power to work where it really matters.”
― Frans van Houten
“If we can keep you healthy, that is better. If you fall sick, you go to the hospital. Both sides, Philips is present.”
― Frans van Houten
“Our health underpins our happiness and is a foundation of economic advancement.”
― Frans van Houten
“First and foremost, we must take a more holistic view of patient care journeys and then better integrate workflows and technology so that the care experience is seamless and provided at the location where it makes most sense.”
― Frans van Houten
“Engagement with young people is always a refreshing break with routine. It’s also a reminder of how we need to constantly keep our thinking agile and unencumbered by traditional rules.”
― Frans van Houten
“We knew we could put the company on the right side of history by decisive transformative action and by redefining our purpose to improving people’s lives through innovation.”
― Frans van Houten
“Indeed, the Fourth Industrial Revolution will greatly lead to increased consumer health awareness and self-management and will enable individualized treatment pathways supported by tele-health care and coaching.”
― Frans van Houten
“Even though we live in a fast-changing world with short term-ism all around, it requires years of determination to transform a company and structurally reap the rewards. Innovation companies need to set their sights on solving unmet needs – but this approach requires focus and long-term tenacity.”
― Frans van Houten
“Poor diet and sedentary behaviour have led to an increase in obesity and lifestyle-related disease and a huge rise in chronic medical conditions.”
― Frans van Houten
“If we are to ensure that healthcare remains affordable and widely available for future generations, we need to radically rethink how we provide and manage it – in collaboration with key health system partners – and apply the technology that can help achieve these changes.”
― Frans van Houten
“Thanks to the digital and big data revolution, we can start to do what was previously unthinkable – to improve patient outcomes and lower healthcare costs while delivering personalized care to each individual.”
― Frans van Houten
“Healthcare continues to move outside the hospital and into our homes and everyday lives. With leading doctors and psychologists, for example, we’ve developed personal health programs designed around patients to catalyze sustainable behavioural change.”
― Frans van Houten
“If we are to ensure that health care remains affordable and widely available for future generations, we need to rethink radically how we provide and manage it.”
― Frans van Houten
“Perhaps sooner than we think, African innovations will help the rest of the world create lasting social and economic value.”
― Frans van Houten
“Our myopic focus on producing and consuming as cheaply as possible has created a linear economy in which objects are briefly used and then discarded as waste.”
― Frans van Houten
“Philips is committed to the circular economy and is applying its principles throughout the organization. We are redesigning our products and looking at ways to capture their residual value.”
― Frans van Houten
“Like all major transitions in human history, the shift from a linear to a circular economy will be a tumultuous one. It will feature heroes and pioneers, naysayers and obstacles, and moments of victory and doubt. If we persevere, however, we will put our economy back on a path of growth and sustainability.”
― Frans van Houten
“Government should create the environment and incentives to stimulate investment in sustainable innovation, take away barriers, and accelerate adoption, even in turbulent economic times.”
― Frans van Houten
“Changing the ways of governments usually doesn’t happen quickly, but time is a luxury the world no longer enjoys.”
― Frans van Houten
“Meaningful innovation can be an important catalyst in encouraging resilience in seniors, keeping them independent and engaged.”
― Frans van Houten
“Healthcare is a conservative marketplace.”
― Frans van Houten
“Insurers reimburse critical care, not the avoidance of incidents. Therefore, investments are not targeted towards prevention.”
― Frans van Houten
“I remain convinced of the compelling case for connected care.”
― Frans van Houten
“Tech can help population health, make health more accessible, more affordable. Tech can also get people get more included in the economy and contribute and drive growth, and growth and wealth are great contributors to a safer world.”
― Frans van Houten
“When I became CEO, I was really worried that we were in commoditized segments that were mature and no longer growing. So we made a radical pivot into health technology because that is one of the world’s unmet needs.”
― Frans van Houten
“It has not escaped us that other competitors have also identified health as an attractive marketplace.”
― Frans van Houten
“When you make a courageous statement, people start to follow you, and that’s nice.”
― Frans van Houten
“Having a consumer brand helps us a lot. We will see more ambulatory care, and there will be a lot of new ways to deliver healthcare… and that means consumerism is going to play a bigger role.”
― Frans van Houten
“Great companies need to reinvent themselves. We can do that: we can stay relevant, we can grow, and we can stay successful. It takes courage, but it’s a path we’ve been preparing for carefully.”
― Frans van Houten
“The entire dynamics of the lighting market are changing. Value is moving toward systems and services.”
― Frans van Houten
“We are very optimistic about our opportunities in China. Our toothbrushes continue to sell very well, while the growth of private hospitals diminishes the risk of government preferring domestic suppliers.”
― Frans van Houten
“The conventional way of selling products out of the catalogue no longer works; the relationship needs to become more sticky.”
― Frans van Houten
“In an aging world with more chronic disease, health and healthcare are enormous opportunities that we want to focus on.”
― Frans van Houten
“Minimally invasive surgery is the way forward: the patient goes home the next day; there are fewer complications.”
― Frans van Houten
“There’s much unlocked potential in Philips.”
― Frans van Houten
“I am pleased with the response of investors towards Philips Lighting and the successful pricing of the I.P.O. This strategic milestone will allow Royal Philips to focus on the fast-growing health technology market.”
― Frans van Houten
“I think, going forward, we need to be much more modest on expectations with regard to China growth: That’s just being realistic.”
― Frans van Houten
“You need to dismount when your horse is dead. What was relevant 20 years ago is no longer relevant today. Therefore, you need to reinvent yourself.”
― Frans van Houten
“We can only compete in the world against competitors from Asia, the United States, or wherever if we look at unmet needs.”
― Frans van Houten
“I think of the world as geographical regions, and it excites me to think about the opportunity that Europe can have if we consider it to be the 500-million-people region that it is.”
― Frans van Houten
“We can squabble between the siblings in Europe and not be very productive and then see China and the U.S. win over the European region. Or – and this is my preferred choice – we team up together and are the strong region that we want to be, using each others’ strengths and building on our commonalities to become the smartest region in the world.”
― Frans van Houten
“At the core, Philips is an innovation company. And for innovation to work, you need to look for the unmet needs.”
― Frans van Houten
“We invented television and stuck with it for 50 years, and then I decided to get out of that. I would like people to know that we are broader than consumer electronics.”
― Frans van Houten
“Light is one of the basic areas that will give you comfort, but it is undergoing a technological revolution in moving from conventional lighting to semiconductor-based lighting, and as it does that, it is becoming intelligent with the transition from analogue to digital.”
― Frans van Houten
“We have transformed Philips into a focused leader in health technology, delivering innovation to help people manage their health.”
― Frans van Houten
“To become the global leader in HealthTech and shape the future of the industry, we will combine our vibrant Healthcare and Consumer Lifestyle businesses into one company.”
― Frans van Houten
“Philips is uniquely positioned to help reshape and optimize population health management by leveraging big data and delivering care across the health continuum, from healthy living and prevention to diagnosis, minimally invasive treatment, recovery, and home care.”
― Frans van Houten
“A siloed approach between suppliers doesn’t really help hospitals well enough.”
― Frans van Houten
“The computer can do a much better job than the human eye, as it is much more systematic in analysing tissues.”
― Frans van Houten
“I’ve always flagged that it will take some time to gradually sell down our interest in lighting and basically pivot to be a medtech company focused entirely on health technology.”
― Frans van Houten
“Lumileds is a highly successful supplier of lighting components to the general illumination, automotive, and consumer electronics markets, with a strong customer base.”
― Frans van Houten
“In the Asian marketplace, we need to come out with products every nine months, not every two years.”
― Frans van Houten
“The shift in demand is toward partners that can improve productivity, and in part, that can be done by software.”
― Frans van Houten
“Price erosion in components is quite fast. If you can capitalize on that by bringing products to the market faster, you will actually gain a better margin realization.”
― Frans van Houten
“We are addressing duplication and complexity. At the same time, we are investing more in research and development, speeding up the time to market of new innovations, and expanding our sales force in markets where growth is to be found, like Turkey, Russia, the Mideast, China, and southeast Asia.”
― Frans van Houten
“Healthy people are not very motivated to manage their health. They just don’t care.”
― Frans van Houten
“When you try to master the emotions of a decision and say, if you’re 50 years from now and you look back, ‘Did we take the right decisions?’ Then the decision becomes a lot easier.”
― Frans van Houten
“In the back of my mind was the nagging discussion: where do we take the portfolio? You can get rid of TV, fine, but then you are in lighting and in health, and those don’t have a lot to do with each other.”
― Frans van Houten
“I came back to Philips and quickly realised that the TV business had a major performance issue and some structural challenges. Rather than try to tweak it and sit things out, we said we had to go for a structural solution.”
― Frans van Houten
“We started experimenting with television in 1928. For a lot of people, Philips has a lot to do with TV.”
― Frans van Houten
“Sometimes that Dutch consensus approach doesn’t move you forward fast enough.”
― Frans van Houten
“Health care has to be delivered as an integrated service across the entire continuum of care. This runs from healthy living and prevention to diagnosis and treatment and recovery and homecare.”
― Frans van Houten
“How can we keep people healthy, and if they get sick, how can we treat them right the first time?”
― Frans van Houten
“As soon as a disease is diagnosed, we still need someone to deliver the care.”
― Frans van Houten
“If we are going to get a grip on escalating costs, we have to focus more on prevention rather than acute care. Technology can help us do that.”
― Frans van Houten
“We can’t think in terms of designing products that we throw over the wall to customers, but instead, we need to design products that are upgradable and maintainable and that can be mined for materials and components that can be reused.”
― Frans van Houten
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