ABSTRACT
In 2006, Royal Philips Electronics Consumer Lifestyle’s InnovationPersonal Care, Drachten, the home of Philips Shavers, found that their customer call rate was unacceptably high. Like many product development teams, they also found that they spent more than expected on development and took longer than planned. In a highly competitive consumer market, those results were a real problem. Suzanne van Egmond says, “Our call rates were too high; we had millions of shavers on the market-a few percent is already a lot of products being returned. Even a small change would make a big di§erence but we wanted a big change.”
