Jeroen Tas: 'if we don't look at the big picture, we can tweak ourselves to oblivion'

When he bought large orders of light bulbs for the Winter Palace, the Russian Tsar became a high-profile customer of Philips, the Dutch multinational corporation founded in 1891 to produce just that: light bulbs. But the company never limited itself to one line of products. In the 20th century, Philips became a household name, with its brand name stamped on a long line of consumer electronics. One of its less known areas was healthcare: as early as 1918, Philips created a medical X-ray tube, and in 1949, the Synchrocyclotron, a type of particle accelerator to study malignant tumours. In 2005 it became clear that the multinational was pivoting to healthcare, when it accelerated the process of divesting many of its units that “defined the company in the eyes of the consumer”, as explained by Jeroen Tas, chief innovation and strategy officer and member of the executive committee of Philips. This is the type of company transformation that attracts attention from academics and business professionals globally. Why take such a big step? “If we don’t look at the big picture, we can tweak ourselves to oblivion”, Jeroen told LSE Business Review managing editor Helena Vieira on 7 November, during the Web Summit conference in Lisbon.