Member Article

Farmcare Kick Starts Its Innovation Agenda With Jaguar

To kick start its innovation agenda, Farmcare, the UK’s leading rural business, held its first innovation session in partnership with Jaguar Land Rover, at the car manufacturer’s Castle Bromwich site. The session marks the first in a series of Farmcare innovation workshops, a key focus for the organisation, to drive its market leading strategy.

True to its collaborative approach, Farmcare looked outside of the agricultural sector to explore how a company with similar processes innovates and future-proofs its business.

Amie Harris, head of business change at Farmcare, said: ’‘Taking the team out of its comfort zone and into a different environment really got the creative juices flowing, as like manufacturing, farming is process-led, so there’s plenty of synergy, but instinct plays an important part too. Feedback from a recent agricultural conference highlighted how refreshing Farmcare’s approach is, as people tend to look inside not outside their own sector.’’

Twelve of the Farmcare team from across different disciplines within the business attended the event: from the CEO, operations director and head of business change, through to craftsmen, farm managers and assistant farm managers.

The day consisted of a factory tour: the 112-acre Jaguar Land Rover site employs 3,700 and produces an all-aluminium line-up including the Jaguar F-TYPE, XJ and all-new XF. A ‘what is innovation?’ workshop followed, as well as breakthrough thinking exercises in a session on untapped potential opportunities.

Technology and innovation are core to Jaguar Land Rover to ensure they remain competitive and stand out in a forward thinking global marketplace - shared a presentation on how they think differently to stay ahead. Opening its doors to visionary companies like Farmcare is a part of Business in the Community’s Big Boardroom Agenda.

Jonathan Garrett, CSR Director at Jaguar Land Rover, said: ’‘It was great seeing Farmcare’s innovative thinking in action. What’s exciting is bringing another dimension, so Farmcare’s team could consider the future from a much wider perspective, not limited by the established thinking in the sector.

’‘At Jaguar Land Rover, we’ve worked hard to build a blueprint for lasting success. We shared a lot of our internal workings with Farmcare: including a fast forward to 2050 exercise, which is about understanding the megatrends, the risks and opportunities our businesses face so we can adapt and remain future relevant.

’‘We’re dedicated to this programme as we need more companies to think long term and be collaborative.

’‘We’re using natural materials for some car parts, and sharing this innovation with Farmcare is the perfect opportunity to help the agricultural business look at opportunities in bio-materials as a sustainable food crops grower and get into the material innovation market.’’

Other topics included looking at sustainability and considering what Farmcare’s unique contribution is as well as thinking about the business’ legacy, managing long term vs short term thinking and how Farmcare can influence customer behaviour.

Innovation workshops are on the Farmcare agenda every quarter and following the event, Farmcare is scoping the feasibility of finding use for waste, inspired by Jaguar Land Rover’s target to send no waste to landfill by 2020. When potatoes and apples, for example, don’t meet retailers’ specification, there’s huge opportunity to use this produce elsewhere.

Amie continued: ’‘innovation in using sustainable materials is a topical area that’s not well executed, so it’s very interesting to us.’’

To remind them to keep innovation top of mind, every team member that participated in the Jaguar Land Rover innovation day, was given a Jaguar keyring as an aide memoire to think outside the box. Farmers are using them on their tractor keys to keep it front and centre!

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Sam Williams .