“EDG honors the people in the room and works to bring out their genius.”
Philips Nuclear Medicine
Challenge:
Having made solid gains through focus on quality improvements, Philips Nuclear Medicine wanted to grow its business and capture market share. Philips recognized that a closer connection with their customers and a deeper understanding of the technology trends that impact them would lead to the development of new products with greater customer value. The company turned to EDG for assistance with its Vital Few initiative: Innovate to Build Platforms for Sustained Revenue Growth.
Solution:
EDG worked with Philips on establishing a program to “Power-Up Innovation” across the entire enterprise, from new products and services to new processes and operations. We set up an innovation structure—comprised of a leadership group and five core teams—to drive collaborative creation of customer value through innovation. This team structure facilitated the generation, capture, selection and funding of new ideas as well as the development of incentives to encourage innovation and training sessions to build innovation capability company-wide. The Voice of the Market and Customer Team conducted hospital visits to identify the needs of patients, technicians, doctors and administrators who use Philips products. The Communication Team devised WikiNucMed, an interactive web site for informing, engaging and sharing Nuclear Medicine innovation programs, tools and success stories.
Every Philips Nuclear Medicine employee has been introduced to new innovation concepts, tools and strategy through the Power-Up Innovation program. And all sites have a skilled team of Innovation Greenbelts—individuals recognized as agents of positive change who are trained to use the tools and techniques of innovation.
Result:
The Gerd Muehllehner Innovation Award, named for one of the first successful developers of a PET scanner, is now given to Philips employees for distinguished contributions through innovation. One such project began as an MRI table cost reduction exercise. Armed with new innovation tools and deep customer insights gained from patient observation in a clinical setting, the team recast the project to overhaul the entire patient handling system, collaborating in new product development with end users and Marketing.
The release in June 2006 of the new Gemini TF PET/CT scanner has the healthcare community buzzing. Innovation has translated to vastly improved image quality, ease of use and reliability in this next-generation product. An extensive backlog of orders ensures that Philips has a leg up on the competition with a first-to-market advanced product.
