Corporate Technologies

Corporate Technologies feeds the innovation pipeline, enabling its business partners – the three Philips operating sectors and external companies – to create new business options through new technologies, venturing and intellectual property development; improve time-to-market efficiency; and increase innovation effectiveness via focused research and development activities. Corporate Technologies encompasses Corporate Research, the Incubators, Intellectual Property & Standards (IP&S), the Philips Innovation Campus as well as Applied Technologies. In total, Corporate Technologies employs about 4,100 professionals around the globe. 

Corporate Technologies actively participates in ‘open innovation’ through relationships with academic and industrial partners, as well as via European and regional projects, in order to improve innovation efficiency and share the related financial exposure. The High Tech Campus in Eindhoven, the Philips Innovation Campus in Bangalore, India, Research Shanghai China, the Cambridge lab and InnoHub are prime examples of environments enabling open innovation. In this way, we ensure proximity of innovation activities to local markets and needs. 

Philips Research is a key innovation partner for Philips’ business sectors. It has three main roles. Firstly, it creates new technologies that help to spur the growth of the Philips businesses. Secondly, it develops unique intellectual property (IP), which will enable longer-term business and creates standardization opportunities for Philips. Lastly, it prepares ventures that can grow into new adjacent businesses for the sectors.

In 2009, Research introduced magnetic particle imaging, a new imaging technology that generates anatomical and functional images of the heart, from which quantitative information, ideally required for diagnosis and therapy selection, can be extracted. This was demonstrated in a pre-clinical study. Another breakthrough innovation is the new digital pathology scanner that is being developed together with the Healthcare Incubator. Its unique properties can be compared to “resolving individual blades of grass in a football pitch while scanning at a data rate of 600 Mb/s.”  Philips has adopted a people-centric approach to research in order to ensure that our innovations offer experiences that fully meet people’s needs and aspirations. In dedicated ExperienceLabs, ideas and concepts are tested using experience prototypes in a natural – but controlled – setting. This provides us with knowledge and insights that we could not otherwise obtain, thereby increasing the likelihood of developing innovations that are meaningful and commercially successful.

Philips has three incubation organizations: the Healthcare, Lifestyle and Lighting & Cleantech Incubators. The main purpose of the Incubators is to create strategic growth opportunities for Philips. In some cases, spin-out or technology licensing is considered. 2009 saw the introduction of DirectLife, an activity-monitoring program designed to help you improve your daily activity level without dramatically changing your lifestyle. Philips also announced the development of digital pathology solutions to ease the workload and support decision making in central and hospital-based pathology departments. 

IP&S proactively pursues the creation of new intellectual property in close co-operation with Philips’ operating sectors and the other departments within Corporate Technologies. Philips’ IP portfolio currently consists of about 48,000 patent rights, 35,000 trademarks, 56,000 design rights and 3,100 domain name registrations. Philips filed approximately 1,550 patents in 2009 with a strong focus on the growth areas in health and well-being. IP&S participates in the setting of standards to create new business opportunities for the Healthcare, Consumer Lifestyle and Lighting sectors. Philips believes its business as a whole is not materially dependent on any particular patent or license, or any particular group of patents and licenses. 

Applied Technologies is a showcase for our open innovation approach, supporting customers both inside and outside Philips through new technologies, new business ideas, consultancy and new product development and introduction services. Applied Technologies is an active player in solutions for the healthcare sector and energy solutions, including solar cells and energy management.