Philips : technical innovator

"You need to imagine the future to see possibilities that aren't there at the moment, but might be in five years' time. Some people call that vision, but what it actually amounts to is not getting into a rut and always thinking about how to improve things." It will be the end of an era when the ban on selling incandescent light bulbs comes into effect in the European Union on 1 September 2012, but there is no reason to believe that the man behind the electronics multinational, Philips, is turning in his grave. Many years later, Anton Philips' vision remains the blueprint for Dutch entrepreneurial spirit. That man, Anton Philips, started working as a salesman at the incandescent light bulb company run by his father and brother in Eindhoven in 1895. The company had been established three years previously in an old shed and had since grown to employ 40 people. The company continued to grow and by the time Anton Philips died in 1951 Philips had a workforce of 100,000 and had become one of the most prominent electronics multinationals in the world - a position it still holds today. So is this a case of just getting lucky? Not at all. Anton Philips' biography reads like an ode to enthusiasm for work, drive and entrepreneurial talent. Even as he worked in that old shed in Eindhoven, the young Anton Philips was already dreaming of the world stage. Well aware from the outset of the modest size of the Dutch market, his focus was always on international expansion. Anton Philips soon became convinced of another important idea as well, namely that you had to innovate to grow your business. For this reason, he established a research laboratory in 1914, which churned out one innovative product after another. With products ranging from radios, compact cassettes and experimental TVs to medical equipment and - of course - the CD, Philips was always at the heart of the action. Sixty years on, Anton Philips' vision remains the blueprint for Dutch entrepreneurial spirit. The Netherlands has acquired its significant role in the global economy thanks to a constant stream of innovative ideas. You might say that the Dutch suffer from a constant drive to improve anything and everything. If there's one thing the Dutch can't stand, it's ineffectiveness, and if there's one thing they're good at, it's putting these innovative ideas to work in real-life situations. Philips is also not the only Dutch company to grow to a global scale thanks to a combination of the drive to innovate and its entrepreneurial spirit. The chemicals and biotech multinational DSM, for example, operates on five continents and has a whole raft of pioneering materials and technologies to its name. Another is the Dutch high-tech group ASML, which makes the machines that produce the smallest computer chips in the world. Then there is Tele Atlas, which has been owned since 2007 by another Dutch company - TomTom. Tele Atlas is one of the two world leaders in the geographic database market. TomTom itself is the market leader for navigation systems. The exhaustive list of successful Dutch technology firms is far more extensive than these few names alone and is also not limited to multinationals. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) drive the Dutch economy. Many operate in highly specialised technological niche markets. Consider, for example, the car industry. Although the Netherlands does not manufacture cars for the consumer market, it is a leading supplier of high-quality, innovative parts produced by more than 250 different Dutch companies for the automotive sector. Ranging from sun roofs (Inalfa Roof Systems) to fasteners (Nedschroef) and semi-conductors (NXP), there are countless niche markets where Dutch companies set the trend in the car world. Carried along by this innate spirit of innovation, the Netherlands is home to a wide range of universities of technology, research centres and knowledge institutes. The scientific world, the government and the business community all work closely together in these think tanks: the government provides incentives and funding, the scientists conduct the research, and the business community conceives useful applications. This is no closed shop, however, quite the contrary in fact. The Netherlands has left the doors wide open for like-minded pioneers who just happen to have a different passport. In fact, 19% of all Master's students at Dutch research universities come from other countries. Research institutes more often than not work together with their international counterparts. The superior technological and logistical infrastructure in the Netherlands also attracts a lot of foreign companies, such as Samsung Electronics, Tata Consultancy Services, FedEx, Cisco Systems, Abbott Laboratories, Nike and the Starbucks Corporation, to name but a few of the leading companies with a presence on Dutch soil. The fiscal bene Continued to page 21