MAKING MUSIC, NOT NOISE
Why the best technology conversations start before the technology.
By Ted Buis
Too many innovation conversations begin with a product looking for an application. I advocate the opposite approach: start with the grower, peel back the problem, and only then decide whether the technology belongs in the solution.
Do not start with the machine If you arrive at a greenhouse already knowing which technology you want to sell, you have probably started with the wrong question.
After decades of working with growers, suppliers and technology companies, I have learned that growers rarely describe their problems in the same language as technology companies describe their products.
The grower may say, “I need more automation.” Or, “I need another way to control this disease.” Or, “I cannot keep replacing this material.”
My first response is normally: Why? Then we start peeling back the onion.
Dig deeper until the true constraint is identified
Why do you need automation? Is labour unavailable? Is the problem cost, consistency, throughput or quality? Which task is creating the bottleneck? What happens before it and after it?
Why do you need a different crop-protection approach? Which pathogen or weed is creating the loss? What are you doing today? What does that programme cost? How much production time is available between crops?
Why do you want to reuse a material? Is replacement cost the issue? Disposal? Availability? Sustainability requirements? Logistics?
You keep asking until the real constraint becomes visible. That is the point where a useful technology conversation can begin.
Plant quality inspection at a nursery near Guangzhou, China. Here, an important question to ask is: Does a change in root architecture create a measurable benefit later in the crop?
Technology in practice
Konflex: the boiler is not the question Our work with Konflex, a manufacturer of mobile steam heat-treatment systems, is a good example. Steam heat treatment is not new. It has been used in horticulture for decades. What is changing are the problems around it: crop-protection options, environmental requirements, labour, resource reuse and the economics of existing sanitation programmes.
So, I do not begin a Konflex conversation by talking about the boiler. I begin with the field or greenhouse.
What are we trying to control? What crop is being grown? How wide is the bed? How deep does treatment need to reach? What is the production window? What is the current programme? What fuel is available? How much capacity is required?
The technical principle may already be proven. The commercial question is whether the right configuration can fit the grower’s operating window and compete economically with what the grower does today.
That is a very different conversation from demonstrating that steam works.
AirTray: follow the value downstream
AirTray gives us a different example. On the surface, it is a propagation tray. According to the manufacturer, its open design encourages air pruning and lateral root development, and it can be used at different levels of automated production.
Those are product attributes. I am more interested in what happens next.
- How is the tray filled?
- How does it move through existing automation?
- What happens with irrigation?
- Handling?
- Grading?
- Transplanting?
- Does a change in root architecture create a measurable benefit later in the crop?
- Does it reduce a bottleneck or create a new one?
The original reason someone becomes interested in a technology is not always where the largest commercial value eventually appears.
That is why I like to follow the value downstream.
The first value proposition is a hypothesis. Technology developers naturally arrive with a value proposition. Higher yield. Lower labour. Better roots. Less water. More consistency. I would treat that first value proposition as a hypothesis, not a conclusion. The grower may confirm it. The grower may discover another benefit that matters more. Or the trial may show that the technology performs perfectly well, but the benefit is not large enough to justify changing the existing system.
Designing a useful trial
All three outcomes are useful The purpose of a commercial trial is not to prove that we were right. It is to discover where the technology creates enough value to earn a place in the market.
Trial with the grower, not simply at the grower. This changes how I think about trials.
The temptation is to test an interesting technology everywhere: more crops, more growers, more climates. That creates activity and a lot of data. But data is not automatically knowledge.
A useful trial starts with a clear question. What technical effect are we expecting? What commercial assumption are we testing? What is the benchmark? What result would be large enough to matter? What result would tell us to change direction?
The grower is not simply providing trial space. The grower understands the workflow, crop, labour, existing solution and practical risk in a way that cannot be recreated from outside.
Trial with the grower, not simply at the grower.
Trial with the grower, not simply at the grower. Pictured here is the author of this article advising a coir producer in India on best practices for drying coir.
The purpose of a commercial trial is not to prove that we were right. It is to discover where the technology creates enough value to earn a place in the market
Ted Buis Founding Partner, Next Step Solutions
Turning innovation into adoption
Evolution normally beats revolution Growers already have greenhouses, benches, irrigation, climate computers, equipment, labour structures and production schedules. The existing system has one enormous advantage: it already works.
People understand it. Its weaknesses are known. The business has adapted around it.
A new technology therefore competes against something familiar. That is why the adoption barrier often falls when innovation improves an existing production process without forcing the grower to redesign everything around it.
Once the value is proven and confidence grows, bigger changes can follow.
Make music, not noise Konflex and AirTray are very different technologies, but they illustrate the same lesson for me.
Start with the grower. Find the real constraint. Understand the existing system. Calculate where the value can occur. Then design the trial to answer the questions that matter. More trials are not automatically better trials. More features do not automatically make a better product. More technology is not automatically more value.
When every trial is answering a different question, we make noise.
When the technology, application, grower problem and economics come together around a clear hypothesis, we start making music.
And that is when innovation has a much better chance of becoming adoption.
MEET THE FOUNDERS
Jennifer Neujahr and Ted Buis
Discover the experience behind Next Step Solutions and their approach to bringing horticultural innovation to market.
