Design Intervention

By: Jennifer ReingoldWed Dec 19, 2007 at 8:14 AM

At Philips, a place long known for big ideas and small numbers, can there be too much of a good thing?

Cash Crop: Philips's Ambilight TVs were introduced in 2004 and have roughly doubled the company's market share of LCD sales.

Of course, the balance between big-picture thinking and smaller, focused, profit-generating ideas is a crucial one for any business. For Philips, it may be the fundamental one. Are high-concept snow globes that may never show up in a Best Buy flyer the ideal way for a public company to change its image and protect shareholders? Or is Philips risking its young, fragile recovery on an impractical dream? Either way, it's a bold experiment, one executives elsewhere are watching closely.

A voluble Italian intellectual trained as an architect, Marzano took over Philips Design in 1991. He sees his purpose as being as cosmic as it is practical. "How can we provide more happiness, a more relaxed life," he asks, "without actually entering the utopian idea that the world should change overnight?" He calls design nothing less than a "catalyst for a paradigm change," the mechanism behind the improvement of the human condition. Global warming, the quest for personal safety, sustainability, the Renaissance--no notion is too big or too amorphous to inform Philips Design's work.

In other words, Philips Design isn't about slapping on a flywheel or a little candy-colored plastic. It's a global think tank, a freewheeling idea farm. In fact, Marzano isn't even required to make money: His group charges market rates both internally (when "hired" by one of Philips's units) and externally (its hundreds of outside clients have included Ford, Nike, Procter & Gamble, and Securitas ); in return, Philips asks only that the group break even. "I don't have to deliver cash to the company," Marzano says. "I have to deliver talent, knowledge, and ideas."

Yet Marzano's attempt to overhaul Philips through design is not just some right-brain fantasia. There is a method here, one that draws together the data-driven old guard, the truest of blue-sky thinkers, and everyone in between. Marzano has devoted his career to exploring meta-trends in society and has put that experience at the center of product development at Philips. So, where a company of this scale would typically rely on designers or engineers to generate ideas in-house and then force them into the market, at Philips the process starts out as macrofocused as possible.

It starts, in other words, with a mandate not to develop the next iPod but to assess what, exactly, would change consumers' lives for the better, whether a lightbulb or a music player. Drawing on broad, proprietary sociocultural research, the group-- a small army of designers, social scientists, cultural experts, and assorted brainiacs--might identify, for example, an emerging baby boom, a global water shortage, or a growing desire to spend more time at home. It then distills its research into a series of "personas," each representing a group with like-minded interests, needs, and values--on child rearing, maybe, or the ideal home. Only then do designers and engineers try to imagine and build a series of products such a composite person might want.

"I admire them greatly," says Claudia Kotchka, vice president, design innovation and strategy at Procter & Gamble, who benchmarked the company when leading P&G's new design focus. "Their practice of design has always been on the leading edge, and their insight into consumers' lives is outstanding."

Just how well Philips sees into our souls was driven home for me in a simulated living room I visited in Eindhoven, Netherlands, where Philips Design is headquartered. A team of researchers and designers had created the room just for me--or rather for "Simone," the persona Philips created to represent people like me: a professional woman in her thirties, pregnant, somewhat comfortable with technology. There were three different "rooms": one for "Justin," a tech-savvy 29-year-old with a huge music collection; another for "Alexandra," a fiftysomething technophobe who loves hosting dinner parties; and Simone's.

Percentage of Philips's total 2005 revenues from products introduced in the previous 12 months: 49% Percentage in 2003: 25%

Settling into Simone's chair, I clicked on the stripped-down remote control, which turned on a device that put the term "idiot box" to rest forever (or perhaps resurrected it, since even an idiot can handle it). There were virtually no buttons, and organized neatly on the screen was information selected just for "me"--my favorite shows, my music, photos, movies, even prenatal yoga instructions. Customizing the screen of the clean, white television required only a simple click and drag. On the table below lay a light wireless digital "tablet," a device that lets you carry the content with you from room to room, take notes, or share pictures. And if another family member were to pick up the tablet, a technology called BodyAura would sense the change and display the corresponding interface. If a friend came to visit, she could download her own pictures just by tapping the top of the tablet with her phone or camera.