February 27, 2025 • 17 mins
In a world where established firm at times find it easier to play it safe, how do we innovate boldly to stay ahead of the curve? Betsabeh Madani Hermann, Global Head of Research at Philips, reveals the 3 golden rules that have fuelled over a century of groundbreaking innovation—from inventing the lightbulb to transforming healthcare with AI.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Aslamla Lake, thank you for joining me in this very
intimate conversation with a leader who's embodying innovation. That's Obay
Medani Herman, the global head.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Of research at Phillips. Welcome, Thank you.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Okay. So, Philip's is known for its innovation in consumer electronics,
healthcare tech, and lighting, but today it's primarily known for
being a health tech leader in the industry. Before we
jump into the exciting things that Phillips is doing today,
let's look back in time slightly.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
So that's okay.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Maybe you could start by telling us how the company
has evolved over time and its approached to innovation, and
maybe factors that have been consistent over time as well.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Of course, so I'll start with the last question first,
and thank you for having me. What's been consistent is
this willingness to invent yourself, which is the essential ingredient
if you're looking at innovation. You can't innovate for the
future by living in the past. And when Phillips started
(01:09):
with light bulbs closet one hundred and thirty three years ago,
that was the cutting edge of what it was doing.
Then bringing on board appliances. And yet today both of
those two, both the lighting and the appliances, that were
at the cutting edge of innovation at a time, have
been divested, and Phillips has really dabbled down on healthcare
now it's healthcare.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
History also goes a long time back.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
If you think about the light bulb and X ray tubes,
or how pathology has been working, which is looking at
the microscope and digital pathology came from Phillips as well.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
This is only about maybe eleven years ago.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Those are newer innovations, but build on the fact that
the initial goal was to have a light bulb light
up the room. Now think about that extended it to
imaging and healthcare and how you can use the latest
technologies to be able to do better images. And then
we walk into the world of AI and robotics, which
I'm sure we get into details.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
I mean, you hinted this slightly, but you know what
would you say are Phillips's three golden rules if surrounding innovation?
Speaker 3 (02:11):
Of course, the three goals that I subscribe to as
well are adaptability, boldness, and integrity. The integrity is you
stand by your values and you do the right thing
and in this case, it's also looking at what are
the biggest problems that you could have an amazing impact on.
The boldness is not to be afraid to reinvent yourself.
(02:34):
It's hard to give what is working and what is
the current statuscope of a business that's doing well. By
thinking about the future and inventing the future, that might
actually disrupt you today. But if you don't do it yourself,
others will do it to you. So that boldness matters.
And also boldness in failing fast, tryal and error, try
new things. There is when you're living at the cutting
edge of innovation, there's no map to follow. You have
(02:57):
to invent the map. You have to write up the
map and learn how to navigate and write map for others.
So that is another important part that failing fast comes
in as a crucial ingredient and boldness is important. And
then adaptability. Times will change, ecosystems change the sense of
learning and learning relearning matters a lot, and that's where
(03:17):
the adaptability comes in. And I have to say those
are not just cre ingredients for the company, but every
single one of my direct reports has that quality. That's
one of the metrics that they're selected on so the
humans being of high integrity, being bold, and having adaptability
that allows our teams to be able to embody and
emulate what we're actually trying to build as well.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
Would you be able to share an example of sailing fast?
Maybe what if you direct apports? Anything interesting in insires?
Speaker 3 (03:45):
So I won't go into too much details of it,
but one of the programs I run, it's like a
venture studio inside the company, and it's called Exploratory Innovations,
and they're very heavily milestone driven.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
If you miss a milestone, we stop it.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
We stopped the project, we pull the funding from it,
and we started on an amazing path. It was actually
an AI project that had also promise. It had an
external partner, It was working with a startup as well.
It was this combination, one of these star childs. You
think every.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Piece is working really well.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
And as the team started working, they learned new facts
and as they learned, they pivoted and they pivoted. But
the final pivot became too far from the initial project.
And as great as that was for the business to
learn something new, what it also meant is we have
to stop the initial project because it just made no sense.
The whole thing happened with about a quarter of the
(04:37):
costs we put aside at the beginning. Now, in a
typical setting, you could say, well, we have the budget,
it's already set. Why don't we start to continue it.
We can join other things, but do we also believe
that it's important to give the breeding room to those
things that are really working, and that's where the milestones
come in. And so we actually stopped this one right
in the middle. And what was interesting was the folks
(04:59):
that were the applicants that were actually working on it,
the individuals, the operators, were all for it. They understood
the mission and so the failing fast was quite a
bit well understood. My team was the one that was
talking to them about, oh, it's okay, like we don't
They felt bad for them, but the team that was
working on the project embraced them, was proud of the
(05:20):
fact that they tried ways that they didn't work and
they eliminated them. And that attitude is so important because
that is where you don't get stuck in a certain
way and a feedback loop that might be negative.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Well, I think the ability to pivot is so unique
and only really putting that in practice can true lessons
be learned. So it's incredible that that opportunity was allowed
by Phillips and your team itself. Speaking of pivoting will
speak slightly of today. So I want to know more
about what is a problem that your team and Phillips
(05:53):
is trying to fix right now and the intersection of
say AI or tech in finding solutions to these problems.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
There are some basic facts and I'll share this with
the audience as well. So if you think about it,
World Health Organization says by twenty thirty, we're going to
be short eleven million healthcare workers. These are essential healthcare workers.
Think of it as doctors, think of it as nurses,
think of it as clinicians. And also that is on
top of what today the world is suffering from. If
(06:22):
you think about today, four and a half billion people,
that's more than half the population doesn't have access to
essential healthcare services. At that rising the growth in population,
at the growth in elderly population, at that the fact
that by twenty thirty, that's not far from now, that's
five years from now, we're going to be missing eleven
(06:42):
million additional healthcare workers.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
So the gaps in.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
The human capital doing some of the work that is
so essential. It's an essential service needed for humans is
becoming wider and wider. Come in technology and AI is
the robotics which help bridge that gap. We can't really,
as one of my colleagues always puts it, we can't
really recruit our way out of this problem. We have
to invent our way out of it and innovate our
(07:09):
way out of it, and that's where robotics and AI
come in. There are three things that matter in the
healthcare ecosystem, and it actually applies to many industries.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
It's the quality, the cost, and the time.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
So you want it to be faster, high quality, and
also at the same time, really really, so it's sorry, faster,
high quality and being able to deliver things more accurately.
Two of them are the same thing. So I repeat
it again to correct it. In healthcare, if you use
robotics and AI, you can actually provide things that are
(07:43):
more accurate and precise, You can do them a lot faster,
and also you can do them at a lower cost.
And by that I don't mean you will make something cheaper.
By that, I mean you can have a doctor free
up their time from having to deal with some of
the mundane work by being a to spend time with
the patients and so instead of seeing one patient, also
they can see maybe two. Or if a machine, if
(08:05):
you're sending someone to an imaging machine, if the patient
positioning can be made faster, or if the image that
has maybe some issues with it can be tweaked using
AI rather than calling the patient back in that device,
that system is open to be used again for another person,
which makes you make the whole system as a whole
more efficient.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
That's incredible and it shows as well the priority that
Phillips has a company is giving to healthcare tech. You know,
speaking of within healthcare, what would you say is the
secret to balancing the tension between pursuing bold, ground breaking
innovation but also ensuring regularly compliance and patient safety. These
(08:44):
are I'm sure challenges that come often within your line
of work. How do you go about addressing them and
maintaining that balance.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
So the biggest tension is actually between the business of
today and business of tomorrow. Once we cross that, then
being able to think about patient safety and regulatory is
almost like a easier task to handle. And it's one
of those things that it's so core embedded to each
of these projects. All the folks that work on our
(09:13):
breakthroughs projects and explorer to innovations have that sense and
understanding of patient safety. They all get the right training.
There is the regulatory piece. The biggest tension that comes
in with cutting edge innovation in a large company is
less so regulatory and as much as that is true,
but the bigger tension regulatory and also working on patient safety.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Those are important and we are a core.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
The biggest tension is if you have a business that
has a product for today and you're building something for
its future, are you disrupting that and are you disrupting yourself?
And how do you keep the innovations that are for
the future away from corporate pressures? So it's procurement, hr
and hiring. Those are the things that are more traditionally
slower in a larger setting. That is in a way
(10:01):
a boulder in the path of these faster innovations. So
what we've done is we've ring fenced our projects. They
are in a way protected from those corporate pressures that
are in a large company of one hundred and thirty
here years old, seventy thousand people, and it allows it
to move with agility. Once you pre create that safe environment,
you can then really also focus on patient safety regulatory
(10:22):
And one of the other things that we do, especially
when it comes to patient safety and regulatory is once
that first hurdle is passed, we.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Work very closely with partners.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
So we have two large projects right now in our
breakthrough innovations.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
One is in robotics.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
One is AI. You chose dose two because it's the
two examples in each world. The one in AI we
have an announced we made announcement with Mass General Brigham
last week just a few days ago around using clinical
data insights for real time patient insights for physicians. That
is something that we're working together with a very cutting
(10:56):
edge healthcare ecosystem with clinicians directly, and so we get
feedback right away. The robotics one, it's in discussions with
the FDA constantly, and that's where we learn along the way,
and it's not that we create something in a silo
and then we bring it out like, oh now, let's
check cuation, safety and regulatory. It's made in the incremental
stages along with those two paths, just so that when
(11:17):
you're done at the end of the day, your product
is ready and it has that high quality and patient
safety embedded in there.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
It's an it's undeniable. The power of data and how
to use to you know, navigate and also chart the
future for product innovation for those who are unaware. But
Toby is her current position is truly grandbreaking. She is
in a very history defining position. She's the first female
head at Phillips for Research in its one thirty one
(11:47):
year history. And I think that's you know, worth worth
uploading for sure. That's a bit you know within your career,
what strategies do you, you know, deployed to ensure your
team's league staff members approach this level of boldness and
groundbreaking factors within projects, but also in their mindset and attitude.
(12:12):
How do you ensure that culture is cultivated?
Speaker 3 (12:15):
For me, it's never been about being first. Now when
in products it's really cool to go to market first,
but in this particular case especially, it's.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
About what comes next.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
So once you achieve a trail brazing position, the responsibility
is so heavy and for people to understand that, it
is making sure you don't leave half the population behind.
When it comes to decision making, it's to reward curiosity
to make an environment merit based rather than some of
the more traditional metrics. And it's about who is bold,
(12:47):
who's adaptable, and in our teams, empowering every individual to
make bold decisions and be able to fail fast is
really important. I have failed quite a lot in my
career and in my past, just like many other folks
in these stages will tell you. And the scars are plenty,
but every time I come across something new, those scars tingle.
And that's a lesson I read somewhere and it was
(13:09):
quite profound. Scars are a sign of a life lived,
and so embracing that, embracing the hard times and the
growth that comes from it is something that my team does.
The one thing that we don't tolerate and I use this,
it's an exact quote from a two by two on
how you put possessions of people is we do not
tolerate competent jerks. That is the one word. You have
(13:32):
four buckets of individuals. You have your lovable stars, their
competent jerks. There is the lovable fool, and then there
is the incompetent jerk, which nobody really wants. But the
hard one is when you have someone that's really good,
but they are toxic to an environment. We don't have that,
And you can ask all of my direct reports. It
is the number one rule higher based on a lovable star,
(13:55):
not based on any other metrics.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Have they got that trademarked yet?
Speaker 1 (13:58):
Because I think now somewhere in the future with things in.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
The future, speaking of I want to hear this myth
surrounding you know, research and development, but also innovation R
and D and innovation can be a bit of a
gate kept industry but department. So for those who aren't
in the field, what would you say is unknown to
(14:24):
the laymen?
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
The biggest myth is that innovation belongs in R and D.
Innovation belongs everywhere. People who are front of the line
working with customers, someone in finance, someone in marketing, anyone
who's curious is not okay with status CO can think
about how do I change this? I want the world
to be better. There's a problem I'm seeing and I
want to address this differently and being able to be
(14:49):
curious and then both to actually do something about it
and then adaptable to learn because you're not necessarily always
right in the first time anyways, But that I think
is the biggest myth. And so that exploratory program that
I mentioned that we have that there was a fail
fast example in there. There's also things that are not
failing fast, and I mean they succeeded fast. And that's
also great because the goal is to fail fast to
(15:12):
succeed faster. I should say that as a second part,
it's not just about the first laugh in that gurup.
That's a program that's open to seventy thousand people at
the company. So anyone from anywhere across Phillips can say, hey,
I have an idea. That doesn't mean they get in
that they get funded. That means they get to participate
in the process of it. Learn how to ask the
(15:32):
right questions, learn about what is a pre mortem. A
pre mortem if the audience isn't no, is when you
think about a concept, then you think about its future
and you assume it failed. Three years from now, this
innovation I have has failed. Then you do an autopsy
and you say, what were the reasons that it failed.
Then you put them into two different categories. Things that
are in your control, things that are not in your control,
(15:54):
but at least you should be aware of. And then
you do something about the things that are within your
control and that minimizes that failure potential of the future
and all of these and asking some of those right
questions around how do you think about a market, how
do you think about the actual different stages of innovation.
All of that comes in from going through this application process.
And we've seen innovation come from sales. We've seen innovation
(16:15):
come from engineers across the company. We've seen it come
from the marketing teams because they see things and then
it creates this cross pollination. Someone's strategy sees a problem,
may not be able to build it, so we bring
them together with other parts of the company that are
able to build it, and then they become this group
that then apply. It is really like a venture studio.
It's just in the boundaries of Phillips.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
I love you anecdotal experience to you know, pre mortem
and an autopsy. It's similar to how you know, surgeons
work in the healthcare fields. It is incredible that Philips,
as a health tech leader, is applying the same principles
essentially to innovation and the tech part of healthcare. All right,
I was going to ask, you know, advice, but I
think we've covered that for leaders, adaptability, boldness, and failing fast.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
To succeed faster.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
So I think that's a good takeaway for the audience.
Thank you by Sabe, Thank you for the audience to
join us, and also I hope you leave with a
reimagined view of what Phillips is doing today. Certainly more
than the light bulbs that we were exposed to growing up.
But yes, thank you very much. Thank you for saying
cure time and energy. Bet Sabay, thank you, thank you,
Hello, ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
Aslamla Lake, thank you for joining me in this very
intimate conversation with a leader who's embodying innovation. That's Obay
Medani Herman, the global head.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Of research at Phillips. Welcome, Thank you.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Okay. So, Philip's is known for its innovation in consumer electronics,
healthcare tech, and lighting, but today it's primarily known for
being a health tech leader in the industry. Before we
jump into the exciting things that Phillips is doing today,
let's look back in time slightly.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
So that's okay.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Maybe you could start by telling us how the company
has evolved over time and its approached to innovation, and
maybe factors that have been consistent over time as well.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
Of course, so I'll start with the last question first,
and thank you for having me. What's been consistent is
this willingness to invent yourself, which is the essential ingredient
if you're looking at innovation. You can't innovate for the
future by living in the past. And when Phillips started
(01:09):
with light bulbs closet one hundred and thirty three years ago,
that was the cutting edge of what it was doing.
Then bringing on board appliances. And yet today both of
those two, both the lighting and the appliances, that were
at the cutting edge of innovation at a time, have
been divested, and Phillips has really dabbled down on healthcare
now it's healthcare.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
History also goes a long time back.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
If you think about the light bulb and X ray tubes,
or how pathology has been working, which is looking at
the microscope and digital pathology came from Phillips as well.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
This is only about maybe eleven years ago.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Those are newer innovations, but build on the fact that
the initial goal was to have a light bulb light
up the room. Now think about that extended it to
imaging and healthcare and how you can use the latest
technologies to be able to do better images. And then
we walk into the world of AI and robotics, which
I'm sure we get into details.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
I mean, you hinted this slightly, but you know what
would you say are Phillips's three golden rules if surrounding innovation?
Speaker 3 (02:11):
Of course, the three goals that I subscribe to as
well are adaptability, boldness, and integrity. The integrity is you
stand by your values and you do the right thing
and in this case, it's also looking at what are
the biggest problems that you could have an amazing impact on.
The boldness is not to be afraid to reinvent yourself.
(02:34):
It's hard to give what is working and what is
the current statuscope of a business that's doing well. By
thinking about the future and inventing the future, that might
actually disrupt you today. But if you don't do it yourself,
others will do it to you. So that boldness matters.
And also boldness in failing fast, tryal and error, try
new things. There is when you're living at the cutting
edge of innovation, there's no map to follow. You have
(02:57):
to invent the map. You have to write up the
map and learn how to navigate and write map for others.
So that is another important part that failing fast comes
in as a crucial ingredient and boldness is important. And
then adaptability. Times will change, ecosystems change the sense of
learning and learning relearning matters a lot, and that's where
(03:17):
the adaptability comes in. And I have to say those
are not just cre ingredients for the company, but every
single one of my direct reports has that quality. That's
one of the metrics that they're selected on so the
humans being of high integrity, being bold, and having adaptability
that allows our teams to be able to embody and
emulate what we're actually trying to build as well.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
Would you be able to share an example of sailing fast?
Maybe what if you direct apports? Anything interesting in insires?
Speaker 3 (03:45):
So I won't go into too much details of it,
but one of the programs I run, it's like a
venture studio inside the company, and it's called Exploratory Innovations,
and they're very heavily milestone driven.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
If you miss a milestone, we stop it.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
We stopped the project, we pull the funding from it,
and we started on an amazing path. It was actually
an AI project that had also promise. It had an
external partner, It was working with a startup as well.
It was this combination, one of these star childs. You
think every.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Piece is working really well.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
And as the team started working, they learned new facts
and as they learned, they pivoted and they pivoted. But
the final pivot became too far from the initial project.
And as great as that was for the business to
learn something new, what it also meant is we have
to stop the initial project because it just made no sense.
The whole thing happened with about a quarter of the
(04:37):
costs we put aside at the beginning. Now, in a
typical setting, you could say, well, we have the budget,
it's already set. Why don't we start to continue it.
We can join other things, but do we also believe
that it's important to give the breeding room to those
things that are really working, and that's where the milestones
come in. And so we actually stopped this one right
in the middle. And what was interesting was the folks
(04:59):
that were the applicants that were actually working on it,
the individuals, the operators, were all for it. They understood
the mission and so the failing fast was quite a
bit well understood. My team was the one that was
talking to them about, oh, it's okay, like we don't
They felt bad for them, but the team that was
working on the project embraced them, was proud of the
(05:20):
fact that they tried ways that they didn't work and
they eliminated them. And that attitude is so important because
that is where you don't get stuck in a certain
way and a feedback loop that might be negative.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Well, I think the ability to pivot is so unique
and only really putting that in practice can true lessons
be learned. So it's incredible that that opportunity was allowed
by Phillips and your team itself. Speaking of pivoting will
speak slightly of today. So I want to know more
about what is a problem that your team and Phillips
(05:53):
is trying to fix right now and the intersection of
say AI or tech in finding solutions to these problems.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
There are some basic facts and I'll share this with
the audience as well. So if you think about it,
World Health Organization says by twenty thirty, we're going to
be short eleven million healthcare workers. These are essential healthcare workers.
Think of it as doctors, think of it as nurses,
think of it as clinicians. And also that is on
top of what today the world is suffering from. If
(06:22):
you think about today, four and a half billion people,
that's more than half the population doesn't have access to
essential healthcare services. At that rising the growth in population,
at the growth in elderly population, at that the fact
that by twenty thirty, that's not far from now, that's
five years from now, we're going to be missing eleven
(06:42):
million additional healthcare workers.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
So the gaps in.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
The human capital doing some of the work that is
so essential. It's an essential service needed for humans is
becoming wider and wider. Come in technology and AI is
the robotics which help bridge that gap. We can't really,
as one of my colleagues always puts it, we can't
really recruit our way out of this problem. We have
to invent our way out of it and innovate our
(07:09):
way out of it, and that's where robotics and AI
come in. There are three things that matter in the
healthcare ecosystem, and it actually applies to many industries.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
It's the quality, the cost, and the time.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
So you want it to be faster, high quality, and
also at the same time, really really, so it's sorry, faster,
high quality and being able to deliver things more accurately.
Two of them are the same thing. So I repeat
it again to correct it. In healthcare, if you use
robotics and AI, you can actually provide things that are
(07:43):
more accurate and precise, You can do them a lot faster,
and also you can do them at a lower cost.
And by that I don't mean you will make something cheaper.
By that, I mean you can have a doctor free
up their time from having to deal with some of
the mundane work by being a to spend time with
the patients and so instead of seeing one patient, also
they can see maybe two. Or if a machine, if
(08:05):
you're sending someone to an imaging machine, if the patient
positioning can be made faster, or if the image that
has maybe some issues with it can be tweaked using
AI rather than calling the patient back in that device,
that system is open to be used again for another person,
which makes you make the whole system as a whole
more efficient.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
That's incredible and it shows as well the priority that
Phillips has a company is giving to healthcare tech. You know,
speaking of within healthcare, what would you say is the
secret to balancing the tension between pursuing bold, ground breaking
innovation but also ensuring regularly compliance and patient safety. These
(08:44):
are I'm sure challenges that come often within your line
of work. How do you go about addressing them and
maintaining that balance.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
So the biggest tension is actually between the business of
today and business of tomorrow. Once we cross that, then
being able to think about patient safety and regulatory is
almost like a easier task to handle. And it's one
of those things that it's so core embedded to each
of these projects. All the folks that work on our
(09:13):
breakthroughs projects and explorer to innovations have that sense and
understanding of patient safety. They all get the right training.
There is the regulatory piece. The biggest tension that comes
in with cutting edge innovation in a large company is
less so regulatory and as much as that is true,
but the bigger tension regulatory and also working on patient safety.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Those are important and we are a core.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
The biggest tension is if you have a business that
has a product for today and you're building something for
its future, are you disrupting that and are you disrupting yourself?
And how do you keep the innovations that are for
the future away from corporate pressures? So it's procurement, hr
and hiring. Those are the things that are more traditionally
slower in a larger setting. That is in a way
(10:01):
a boulder in the path of these faster innovations. So
what we've done is we've ring fenced our projects. They
are in a way protected from those corporate pressures that
are in a large company of one hundred and thirty
here years old, seventy thousand people, and it allows it
to move with agility. Once you pre create that safe environment,
you can then really also focus on patient safety regulatory
(10:22):
And one of the other things that we do, especially
when it comes to patient safety and regulatory is once
that first hurdle is passed, we.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Work very closely with partners.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
So we have two large projects right now in our
breakthrough innovations.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
One is in robotics.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
One is AI. You chose dose two because it's the
two examples in each world. The one in AI we
have an announced we made announcement with Mass General Brigham
last week just a few days ago around using clinical
data insights for real time patient insights for physicians. That
is something that we're working together with a very cutting
(10:56):
edge healthcare ecosystem with clinicians directly, and so we get
feedback right away. The robotics one, it's in discussions with
the FDA constantly, and that's where we learn along the way,
and it's not that we create something in a silo
and then we bring it out like, oh now, let's
check cuation, safety and regulatory. It's made in the incremental
stages along with those two paths, just so that when
(11:17):
you're done at the end of the day, your product
is ready and it has that high quality and patient
safety embedded in there.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
It's an it's undeniable. The power of data and how
to use to you know, navigate and also chart the
future for product innovation for those who are unaware. But
Toby is her current position is truly grandbreaking. She is
in a very history defining position. She's the first female
head at Phillips for Research in its one thirty one
(11:47):
year history. And I think that's you know, worth worth
uploading for sure. That's a bit you know within your career,
what strategies do you, you know, deployed to ensure your
team's league staff members approach this level of boldness and
groundbreaking factors within projects, but also in their mindset and attitude.
(12:12):
How do you ensure that culture is cultivated?
Speaker 3 (12:15):
For me, it's never been about being first. Now when
in products it's really cool to go to market first,
but in this particular case especially, it's.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
About what comes next.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
So once you achieve a trail brazing position, the responsibility
is so heavy and for people to understand that, it
is making sure you don't leave half the population behind.
When it comes to decision making, it's to reward curiosity
to make an environment merit based rather than some of
the more traditional metrics. And it's about who is bold,
(12:47):
who's adaptable, and in our teams, empowering every individual to
make bold decisions and be able to fail fast is
really important. I have failed quite a lot in my
career and in my past, just like many other folks
in these stages will tell you. And the scars are plenty,
but every time I come across something new, those scars tingle.
And that's a lesson I read somewhere and it was
(13:09):
quite profound. Scars are a sign of a life lived,
and so embracing that, embracing the hard times and the
growth that comes from it is something that my team does.
The one thing that we don't tolerate and I use this,
it's an exact quote from a two by two on
how you put possessions of people is we do not
tolerate competent jerks. That is the one word. You have
(13:32):
four buckets of individuals. You have your lovable stars, their
competent jerks. There is the lovable fool, and then there
is the incompetent jerk, which nobody really wants. But the
hard one is when you have someone that's really good,
but they are toxic to an environment. We don't have that,
And you can ask all of my direct reports. It
is the number one rule higher based on a lovable star,
(13:55):
not based on any other metrics.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Have they got that trademarked yet?
Speaker 1 (13:58):
Because I think now somewhere in the future with things in.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
The future, speaking of I want to hear this myth
surrounding you know, research and development, but also innovation R
and D and innovation can be a bit of a
gate kept industry but department. So for those who aren't
in the field, what would you say is unknown to
(14:24):
the laymen?
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
The biggest myth is that innovation belongs in R and D.
Innovation belongs everywhere. People who are front of the line
working with customers, someone in finance, someone in marketing, anyone
who's curious is not okay with status CO can think
about how do I change this? I want the world
to be better. There's a problem I'm seeing and I
want to address this differently and being able to be
(14:49):
curious and then both to actually do something about it
and then adaptable to learn because you're not necessarily always
right in the first time anyways, But that I think
is the biggest myth. And so that exploratory program that
I mentioned that we have that there was a fail
fast example in there. There's also things that are not
failing fast, and I mean they succeeded fast. And that's
also great because the goal is to fail fast to
(15:12):
succeed faster. I should say that as a second part,
it's not just about the first laugh in that gurup.
That's a program that's open to seventy thousand people at
the company. So anyone from anywhere across Phillips can say, hey,
I have an idea. That doesn't mean they get in
that they get funded. That means they get to participate
in the process of it. Learn how to ask the
(15:32):
right questions, learn about what is a pre mortem. A
pre mortem if the audience isn't no, is when you
think about a concept, then you think about its future
and you assume it failed. Three years from now, this
innovation I have has failed. Then you do an autopsy
and you say, what were the reasons that it failed.
Then you put them into two different categories. Things that
are in your control, things that are not in your control,
(15:54):
but at least you should be aware of. And then
you do something about the things that are within your
control and that minimizes that failure potential of the future
and all of these and asking some of those right
questions around how do you think about a market, how
do you think about the actual different stages of innovation.
All of that comes in from going through this application process.
And we've seen innovation come from sales. We've seen innovation
(16:15):
come from engineers across the company. We've seen it come
from the marketing teams because they see things and then
it creates this cross pollination. Someone's strategy sees a problem,
may not be able to build it, so we bring
them together with other parts of the company that are
able to build it, and then they become this group
that then apply. It is really like a venture studio.
It's just in the boundaries of Phillips.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
I love you anecdotal experience to you know, pre mortem
and an autopsy. It's similar to how you know, surgeons
work in the healthcare fields. It is incredible that Philips,
as a health tech leader, is applying the same principles
essentially to innovation and the tech part of healthcare. All right,
I was going to ask, you know, advice, but I
think we've covered that for leaders, adaptability, boldness, and failing fast.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
To succeed faster.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
So I think that's a good takeaway for the audience.
Thank you by Sabe, Thank you for the audience to
join us, and also I hope you leave with a
reimagined view of what Phillips is doing today. Certainly more
than the light bulbs that we were exposed to growing up.
But yes, thank you very much. Thank you for saying
cure time and energy. Bet Sabay, thank you, thank you,
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!