Electronics giant Philips must speed up the launch of new products and decentralise, new CEO Frans van Houten says in an interview with Wednesday’s Financieele Dagblad.

‘We have to operate more quickly. Philips is too slow and too centrally-run,’ Van Houten told the paper.
In order to achieve this, Philips is to give local managers more say and decision-making powers.
‘Historically, all power lay at the centre, but I see Philips more as a distribution system for entrepreneurial units which work well together,’ he said.
The new approach, outlined in a speech by Van Houten in Shanghai last week, has been given the name Accelerate.