In a German article we have already taken a first look at the new Verwaayen's "action plan". In our view, all the hype boils down to two not very new strategies: redundancies and cost-cutting.

Our main concern was that it is planned to hit the R&D yet again. There are plans to cut back 40% of the sites "overtime" (sic). Or so we thought.

We found this information on the cuts from the Q&A on the intranet.

Now things have changed. No, there has been no announcement to our knowledge. There is no new video from Ben explaining his visions to us. There has just been a small change in one file.

The Q&A we quoted above contained the following lines:

How many R&D sites are you going to close?

Our plan is to reduce our number of sites by 40% overtime.

These lines have disappeared.

What we are let with now is the following statement on R&D:

8. What’s the objective of this R&D sites consolidation?

It’s clearly to bring complexity down. There are today close to 90 R&D sites in the group with many of them working on the same topic. We need to have more specialization on the sites while maintaining close collaboration among them.

Hmmm .. we ask ourselves, why this change? Let's speculate a little:

• Ben has had a change of heart. Someone or people have helped him see sense.
• The company still plans to reduce the number of sites but doesn't want an unsettled R&D community - there are still deadlines to be met
• There is something else in the pipeline - be it for better or worse.

So what is correct? Is it a change of heart, a change of strategy or information hiding? You pays your money and you takes your choice!.

Who knows?