Wido Menhardt?s lithe, athletic frame throws a web around the fact that he is a world leading technologist. The new CEO of the Philips Innovation Campus (PIC) in Bangalore?the innovation centre of the Euro 23 billion Royal Philips Electronics?doesn?t look a tech geek from any angle but he is one. Wido holds a PhD in Computer Science from Hamburg University, and an MSc in Physics from the Technical University of Vienna. In industry circles he is known as a seasoned technology executive with a passion for taking technology ideas from scratch to market and to then scale them to volume.
The Philips Innovation Campus (PIC) in Bangalore is Philips? largest product development site in Asia with engineers working on various programmes across sectors including healthcare, lighting, consumer lifestyle and corporate technologies. Wido has moved to India (he compares India?s road traffic to Nicaragua where he has a vacation home) to re-energise PIC and help it concentrate on emerging markets.
Wido came to Bangalore from his previous role in Philips as vice-president (engineering) at Philips Healthcare Informatics, responsible for a global informatics infrastructure organisation of more than 400 engineers in Silicon Valley, the Netherlands, Peru, Israel and Bangalore.
His parents are Austrian (Walther Menhardt is an entrepreneur and physicist and Moje Menhardt Wipplinger is an internationally acclaimed artist). He grew up in Austria, Germany and Holland and now calls Los Gatos, California his home. At the moment, he lives in Bangalore with his wife and two children, Mats (born in Toronto) and Camilla (born in Los Gatos).
?I am here in India to design and develop products for the Indian market. Thus far, much of the work on software but that?s going to change. Now we are looking to launch new products in healthcare and lighting,? he says.
Wido is also focusing on a slew of products in oncology, cardiology and women?s health segment. PIC has developed a single interface for handling medical data that resides on several workstations. Recently PIC announced a new division that will help develop software and control systems for lighting products. So, Wido has already started steering the India ship towards his new objectives.
This is Wido?s second innings at Philips. He started his career at Philips Medical Systems in Hamburg (Germany) and Eindhoven (Netherlands) where he authored more than 50 papers in journals. Then the entrepreneurial bug bit him. As CTO of his start-up, he drove a cancer detection software product from proof-of-concept to successful FDA submission in only 18 months. That was probably a defining moment in his career, one that gave him immense satisfaction.
After acquisition by Kodak, he stayed on as general manager for another couple of years to launch the product in the US and then initiated business in China. ?India is the seventh country I am doing business in,? he says. Moving on from Kodak, he designed several Web 2.0 websites for applications such as geo mash-ups, social networks and wiki indexing. He even helped set-up a search engine, before Google became a household name.
Wido also served as CTO and vice-president engineering for Cedara Software, first in Toronto and later in the Silicon Valley. He was responsible for Cedara?s flagship 3D visualisation product. He played a critical role in building a successful engineering consulting practice at Cedara with a global customer list including GE, Siemens, Philips, Toshiba and Hitachi. As CTO, he initiated several incubator products including a domain-specific application framework and embeddable high-performance imaging software components.
Wido?s reputation as a high class technologist kept growing and Philips wanted him back. ?I thought why not. After all, Philips gives you great scale,? he says. ?So I was back.?
PIC is now trying to be entrepreneurial in nature. ?We are committed to developing cutting edge healthcare products and technologies for the Indian market. The cost structure in India is unique. The traditional approach of selling the lowest priced products from the US in India will not work. Our intention is to develop more products for India, developed in India,? he says.
Some of the technologies PIC is working on include interoperability in medical products, new CT scan technology and its analysis to identify bone structure and detect osteoporosis, and clinical applications which collaborate various post-processing workstations onto a single interface. The centre is also working on an image archiving communication system that helps link patient information between various hospitals and care providers.
Being an outdoor adventurer, he is missing a bit of skiing and surfing in Bangalore. ?But I?ll surely find a way out. One thing I am particular about are my yoga classes. They have really helped me concentrate better,? he says. ?In life, I feel I have achieved my childhood goals. It?s great to influence people?s lives with great products.?