T he two years since our spinoff from Royal Philips have been very, very intense for my department. We have been and are still going through a big transition to make ourselves into the future lighting company that we want to be. Some people who had been here 15-20 years have found this difficult - we like to call ourselves a start-up with a 127-year history and working for a start-up can be challenging for some. But many of us also found it energizing because the split gave us an opportunity to really focus on things in a way that make sense for a lighting company. When the split came, we asked, Who are we? What do we need? How do we want to operate? Normally when you split, you copy what is there and then you optimize. But I had a significant cost cutting target to meet, so we didn't do it that way. Instead, we moved immediately to our future way of doing things. When the split was announced in Q4 2014, we ran over 4,200 applications. Today we run a few more than 1,300. Every single contract that we have has also been renegotiated. What does it take to reinvent a "127-year-old Startup"? the Cio of Philips lighting describes how he helped make the company future ready after its spinoff from royal Philips. 23