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How Phillips is changing itself to focus on new areas such as elderly health care. The acquisition of Lifeline which is a call service for elderly patients that helps them for independent living. products are being redesigned for consumer health care. One such product is a HeartStart Home Defibrillator which costs $1200 without prescription at drug stores. Ivo Lurvink heads the consumer healthcare division formed in 2004 with the goal of tapping opportunities outside of hospitals. As Phillips new CEO sees it hospitals care is expensive and more and more people are becoming savvy and smart about taking care of themselves with products available and more products need to be designed with them in mind. In targeting needs of elderly Phillips has identified independent living as an important market and has developed a "senior solutions sweet spot" as the kind of customers in this group it would like to target. to get an idea what Phillips is trying to dream up in redesigned or new products, Ivo Lurvink is looking at the broken bones that 350,000 Americans who fall and break bones have to struggle with. Could Philipps come up with a product that detects motion and balance? Philips CEO Gerard Kleisterlee sees the trend as being health care is being increasingly pushed out of hospitals which are expensive and into homes and clinics, and patients are behaving more like consumers and asking smart questions of what will be best for them. Philips has closed most of its electronics factories, its components division, and sold its seminconductor business to private equity firms for $7.4 billion. Its a big shift for a technology company but lower priced Asian imports have convinced Philips that it must make a shift, especially after losses in 2001 of over 2 billion euros and in 2002 of 3 billion euros. The professional medical products division was a bright spot in a recovery with earnings growth of 40%. It sells large equipment to hospitals. Gerard Kleisterlee who took over as CEO of Phillips in 2001 is making a change that is also being made at GE and Siemens as health care becomes increasingly important. Kleisterlee is himself an engineer an after the post tech bubble asked himself "what is the hand of cards that I have and how do I playthem?" Changing its orientation and moving into new products with better margins and less competition in high growth markets such as elderly care is the result of this reassessment. ...

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In comments to the Financial Inquiry Commission bankers Blankfein and Dimon show a lack of comprehension of the magnitude of the global financial crisis and their role in it. Blankfein says this kind of crisis was a once in a 100 years event and one should't react. Dimon says such crises happen every 5 to 7 years and is not something to get overly concerned about. And they offer no solutions or problem solving ideas, except to resist any form of regulation that would strictlly limit damage from a future crisis.

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Corner Office, is a new Sunday Business feature in the NYT. This interview with Greg Brenneman of the turnaround at Continental Airlines, was done by Adam Bryant. Corner Office will cover leadership and Management. This is a wide ranging interview with Brenneman sharing not only his philosophy on work and business, but also his philosophy of life. He describes his approach to a company based on asking what are the two or three most important things you do, levers that you pull, that will make a difference in this company. It should all fit in one page. If its not simple and easy to tell a colleague, then its not right or its too complicated with buzzwords. Another approach is ask what are the 2 or 3 things you don't do which are bleeding the the business. Can you put these things down on a mental page, just one page, just 2 or 3 things that stick out, you absolutely don't want to do. That helps you put down the plan of attack. Brenneman sees too many executives focussed on economic gains and not having a rounded life, a balance that helps them lead happy, productive lives. In his view the balanced person is better at work because he finds fulfillment from all aspects of life. What leaders consider important is a shadow that they cast on the whole organization, in Brenneman's view, making it very important that the leaders actions convey the right message that they care about people....

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This New Yorker has resilence in his roots in the Scottish Hebrides islands. No wonder he was able to take up the challenge of a US unable to extricate itself from  wars in the Middle East (Reagan, Bushes, Obama), and unfair trade with China, and an onslaught of unfavorable media attention. His name is DJT. According to the BBC in this story on Donald Trump's mother Mary Ann Mcleod, she was a regular churchgoer, well respected in the community, who visited her homeland in Scottish isle of Lewis, British Hebrides, frequently. Mary Ann McLeod is the youngest of 10 children of a Scottish family in the town of Tong in the Hebridean isle of Lewis in the North Sea, northwest of the Scotland mainland. Her father ran the local post office. The family was  relatively poor coming from Scottish people cleared of Highlanders during the Clearances and with fishing disasters in the family. Two hundred servicemen returning from the first world war to Tong lost their lives in a shipping disaster and the economy of the island was in poor shape. With no opportunities or future many immigrated to Canada. Mary Ann's sister Catherine immigrated to Canada and on a visit to Tong she took Mary back with her to New York in 1930. Mary worked as a nanny for a wealthy family in New York before meeting a socialite of German immigrants Fred Trump. Mary returned to Scotland in 1934 and by then she found a new life with Fred Trump whom she married. The couple lived in a wealthy area of Queens and Fred Trump ran a real estate business he had inherited with his mother. Donald Trump still has three cousins in Tong in the British Hebrides Scottish isles. His older sister Maryanne Trump Barry regularly visited Tong. Donald Trump visited Tong in 2008. Of this family a local who knows the cousins and the family John MacIver, a local councillor and friend of the cousins told BBC in 2017- "They are very nice, gentle people and I'm sure they don't want all the publicity that's around. I quite understand that they don't want to talk about it."   ...