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Circular Strategy at Philips: Turning Trade-Ins Into Revenue
Irresistible Circular Business
How can a 100+ year old linear company transform its processes to make circularity commercially irresistible?
In this episode, Patrick Lerou, Global Lead for Circularity, and co-host Florian Witt, Director of Technology at INDEED Innovation, discuss how Philips built a circular system for high-value medical equipment that turns trade-ins into revenue, parts harvesting into supply chain resilience, and refurbishment into a competitive advantage.
What you'll hear in this episode:
• How Philips uses a three-tier triage system to maximize value from returned equipment through resale, parts harvesting, or certified recycling.
• Why "seeing is believing" works as a sales strategy, with factory tours convincing procurement directors and even governments of refurbishment quality.
• How the Suez Canal crisis revealed circularity's hidden benefit: supply chain resilience through self-sourced components.
This episode covers the operational mechanics and commercial logic behind enterprise-scale circularity, including how to navigate fragmented global regulations and connect data points.
This is the fourth episode in the series Irresistible Circular Business, sponsored by INDEED Innovation, the global design and innovation firm pioneering the Circular Economy. The series showcases business practices that deliver irresistible commercial and circular results, with examples from different industries across different R-strategies.
People
Patrick Lerou, Global Lead in Circularity & Chief of Staff Circular Lifetime Solutions at Philips
https://www.linkedin.com/in/patricklerou/
Florian Witt, Director of Technology at INDEED Innovation
https://www.linkedin.com/in/florian-m-witt/
Patrick Hypscher, Circular Business Strategist, PaaS Expert
https://www.linkedin.com/in/hypscher/
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
04:25 How Philips Went Circular
08:00 Motivation for Circularity
12:15 Causes of Resistance and Winning Customers
19:35 Regulation Roadblocks Worldwide
22:49 Importance of Collaboration in Health Care
24:16 Circular KPIs That Prove Value
28:00 Data Insights and Supply Resilience
34:16 Designing Circular Business
40:46 Outro
About
Philips is a Dutch health-technology company founded in 1891 and headquartered in Amsterdam, with tens of thousands of employees operating in more than 100 countries and annual sales of roughly €15–20 billion in recent years. After decades as a diversified electronics group, it is now focused on health tech, offering medical imaging and diagnosis systems, image-guided therapy solutions, patient monitoring and connected care, as well as selected consumer health and personal care products.
In its circular-economy work, Philips runs “Circular Edition” and other circular equipment portfolios that supply refurbished and pre-owned medical systems restored to “as-new” quality, along with refurbished consumer products where appropriate. The company also offers take-back for all professional medical equipment it sells directly, prioritizing refurbishment and parts harvesting, and using certified recyclers at true end-of-life to extend product lifetimes, reduce virgin material use, and avoid landfill.
Further Links
ReCommerce Playbook https://www.indeed-innovation.com/the-recommerce-playbook-from-returns-to-revenue/
More on Philips Factory: https://www.philips.de/a-w/about/news/archive/standard/news/2025/202503-philips-werk-hamburg-gewinnt-nachhaltigkeitsauszeichnung.html
One-page Summary
Sign-up for the Circularity.fm Newsletter and get a summary with the take-aways of this episode. Register here: https://circularity.fm/episode/circular-strategy-at-philips-turning-trade-ins-into-revenue/
View all episodes
By Patrick Hypscher
5
11 ratings
Irresistible Circular Business
How can a 100+ year old linear company transform its processes to make circularity commercially irresistible?
In this episode, Patrick Lerou, Global Lead for Circularity, and co-host Florian Witt, Director of Technology at INDEED Innovation, discuss how Philips built a circular system for high-value medical equipment that turns trade-ins into revenue, parts harvesting into supply chain resilience, and refurbishment into a competitive advantage.
What you'll hear in this episode:
• How Philips uses a three-tier triage system to maximize value from returned equipment through resale, parts harvesting, or certified recycling.
• Why "seeing is believing" works as a sales strategy, with factory tours convincing procurement directors and even governments of refurbishment quality.
• How the Suez Canal crisis revealed circularity's hidden benefit: supply chain resilience through self-sourced components.
This episode covers the operational mechanics and commercial logic behind enterprise-scale circularity, including how to navigate fragmented global regulations and connect data points.
This is the fourth episode in the series Irresistible Circular Business, sponsored by INDEED Innovation, the global design and innovation firm pioneering the Circular Economy. The series showcases business practices that deliver irresistible commercial and circular results, with examples from different industries across different R-strategies.
People
Patrick Lerou, Global Lead in Circularity & Chief of Staff Circular Lifetime Solutions at Philips
https://www.linkedin.com/in/patricklerou/
Florian Witt, Director of Technology at INDEED Innovation
https://www.linkedin.com/in/florian-m-witt/
Patrick Hypscher, Circular Business Strategist, PaaS Expert
https://www.linkedin.com/in/hypscher/
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
04:25 How Philips Went Circular
08:00 Motivation for Circularity
12:15 Causes of Resistance and Winning Customers
19:35 Regulation Roadblocks Worldwide
22:49 Importance of Collaboration in Health Care
24:16 Circular KPIs That Prove Value
28:00 Data Insights and Supply Resilience
34:16 Designing Circular Business
40:46 Outro
About
Philips is a Dutch health-technology company founded in 1891 and headquartered in Amsterdam, with tens of thousands of employees operating in more than 100 countries and annual sales of roughly €15–20 billion in recent years. After decades as a diversified electronics group, it is now focused on health tech, offering medical imaging and diagnosis systems, image-guided therapy solutions, patient monitoring and connected care, as well as selected consumer health and personal care products.
In its circular-economy work, Philips runs “Circular Edition” and other circular equipment portfolios that supply refurbished and pre-owned medical systems restored to “as-new” quality, along with refurbished consumer products where appropriate. The company also offers take-back for all professional medical equipment it sells directly, prioritizing refurbishment and parts harvesting, and using certified recyclers at true end-of-life to extend product lifetimes, reduce virgin material use, and avoid landfill.
Further Links
ReCommerce Playbook https://www.indeed-innovation.com/the-recommerce-playbook-from-returns-to-revenue/
More on Philips Factory: https://www.philips.de/a-w/about/news/archive/standard/news/2025/202503-philips-werk-hamburg-gewinnt-nachhaltigkeitsauszeichnung.html
One-page Summary
Sign-up for the Circularity.fm Newsletter and get a summary with the take-aways of this episode. Register here: https://circularity.fm/episode/circular-strategy-at-philips-turning-trade-ins-into-revenue/