DESIGN: Creating an intellectual powerhouse, as Philips is doing, can be good for business, too, and makes a radical change in creativity, writes  HAYDN SHAUGHNESSY

CORPORATIONS ARE not noted for being intellectual powerhouses. At least, that is, the corporation of the recent past was known more for its ability to command and control vast armies of workers than for treatises on the direction of modern society.

Can an inquiring intellect lead a corporate behemoth down the road to repeated and prolonged success? Philips, the consumer electronics and medical devices company based in the Netherlands, is one company whose recent history suggests that competitiveness might be be just be found in the corporate seminar room.

Philips' revival from decline during the depths of the last recession - it laid off 45,000 people in the early 1990s - to become a global innovator, not only in design but also in its clever use of leading edge communications, is an object lesson in how a corporation can switch paradigm. It is also a story of people from different intellectual disciplines, all converging to build a new era of design.

"It started with the first transformation of the company in the early 1990s," says Stefano Marzano, chief executive and creative director at Philips' Design, the company's inhouse design studio.

"The basis of regeneration was a statement: 'Let's make things better'. Our then president Jan Timmers thought we should look at technology in a different way, to present us with solutions for a better life," he says. What constitutes "a better life" is, for Marzano, a continuing inquiry into the way society is changing.

"What quality of life are we talking about?" he asks. "We have to understand of people and society what does a better quality of life mean, what does it mean for people in different societies or regions. It leads us to solutions that are relevant and meaningful, and to an advance in their current situation," he says.

Marzano's design team, including sociologists, futurists and philosophers, now numbers 450, all engaged in the inquiry into what makes life better. Under his design leadership, they are currently trying to change the paradigm in healthcare.

Governments, and many other organisations, typically rely on a simplistic concept of what progress or improvement actually means. Better usually means more good and less bad. Shorter waiting lists in a hospital, coupled to more operations, for example.

Real progress, though, might mean neither of these. It might rely on transformation. The real measure of progress in healthcare, for example, has to mean less people becoming sick. Our health services and the vast range of companies who are dependent on them, however, do not think like this.

To think this way, to change paradigm from treatment to prevention, is something we all know should happen, but are any of us not sceptical about it happening?

The inquiry into a better way of life has led Marzano and his staff to seek out ways to put prevention at the top of the corporate agenda.

A new Philips' health service DirectLife - note the switch in emphasis from "product" to "service" - is intended to continuously monitor and, says Marzano, "record your activities so you can learn about your daily behaviour and use that data to reach new health targets".

It might sound more cumbersome and convoluted than the simple Philishave, the company's ubiquitous electric shaver, but until health device companies shift paradigm and learn how to make money from prevention, then the pressure on health services is going to be more of the same: more diagnostics, more drugs and more cost. Prevention is a fruitful area for research and design.

In search of new business, companies like Philips are now interested in how you eat, move, sleep, awaken, and stay fit. Marzano's department have been experimenting with new ways of doing health diagnostics, to make services better, while bringing costs down. Of course, such inquiries are driven by corporate self-interest: novelty brings with it new routes to revenues. "In some cases the solution is not in the technology," says Marzano, "but in the design of the whole experience. . . of all stakeholders."

As an example, he talks about Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machines. According to Marzano, an MRI involving children can take four hours to complete because of the trauma it induces. Adult MRIs can take as long as an hour-and-a-half.

To reduce the traumatic impact, Marzano's team have created a pre-MRI suite where children are able to play with a miniature MRI machine, passing toys through so they can see what a magnetic image looks like (they get to keep the toy). Further ideas are ambient lighting that patients can control - so they get to go into a suite decorated in their favourite colour.

The new suites were designed with children and nurses, the two stakeholders who benefit most from the suites. MRI scans have, Marzano claims, gone down from four hours to half-an-hour, and with reduced sedation.

Other products in the Philips' firmament are television screens that you can customise, ie change the frame and colour, and a wake-up light. Whereas in the old days a consumer electronics company would be happy to sell you a digital alarm clock combined with a radio, the new way is represented by the research into the best way to start the day. The Wake Up Light puts a coloured beam of light across the ceiling of your bedroom that glows like the dawn sun.

Philips is also experimenting with ways that users can customise these lights - including giving people the ability to project messages (see box). Just like the personal ringtone on a mobile phone, the messages could come in standard formats or be entirely customisable.

The Wake Up Light began life in Philips' five-year Horizon 3 research programme in 1998. Marzano explains that all Philips research is organised around three Horizons. Horizon 1 is the here and now, the innovations in existing product lines that are generating cash from sales.

A typical but nonetheless bizarre Horizon 1 product is the Philips Bodygroom, an electric shaver for the private parts of the body. Philips has a long history of producing face shaving products for men and body shaving products for women. Bodygroom was created for men and when launched by subsidiary Norelco in the United States in 2006 became a runaway success under the banner: Add an inch. It remains one of the great online viral marketing achievements, shifting three times the expected number of body groomers in its first year.

The Philips story illustrates what design is currently about. Imagining new needs and inventing the future around them. That is the intellectual side of the business.

"We have a base of intellectuals here without leaving practical focus behind," Marzano argues. "The combination of the two is what gives longevity to the company. It's the basis of creativity to find out the purpose of technology for people."

Since the 1990s Philips has transitioned from its earlier motto, Let's Make Things Better, to Sense and Simplicity. Sense? What is meaningful and relevant? Simplicity? Understanding the significance of solutions, signifying an advance in technology but also an improvement in quality experienced, a transformation of lifestyle.

Radical in other words.

CHANGEPATTERNS:

DirectLife
Directlife is an activity-monitoring device, which you can wear around your neck, or slip into a pocket. "This device discreetly records how much you move and calculates how many calories you burn - all day long, whatever you're doing," says project leader Ton Rademaker. "You can even wear it while swimming."

At the end of each day, you can upload your results via an online portal, and compare your results with friends and colleagues, or monitor your progress privately. "Directlife will also send weekly e-mails that review what you've achieved over the past week, and give you advice for the week to come. If you need more support, or help with setting targets, you can contact an expert coach for guidance and advice."

The Wake Up Light

Originating in the late 1990s in Philips Nebula project, the Wake Up Light is based on research that shows if we wake up to sunlight, we wake up feeling better. The light simulates dawn sunlight, and is currently being developed in new directions around more direct messaging.

Ambient Experience in Healthcare

Ambient Experience is a product class where patients and hospital staff get to co-design environments to make health care and diagnostics less traumatic. The first example is the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) suites that engage children in a number of learning activities in preparation for MRI scans.

"Through a combination of light, animations, sound technologies and spatial design," says Philips. "A soothing and comfortable environment is created that can help distract and empower patients, while clinical staff enjoy working in an environment that's designed to make their jobs easier."