Carsten's Corner: Innovation

Carsten's Corner: Innovation Innovation is, to me, to make something different in order to make something better than it is or something that already exists. For me, that is innovation. Innovation is the basis of our development so that we can penetrate deeper into the markets we are present in, get access to new markets, and access to new customers and new dealers, who see us for something new and different. What makes our products new and innovative? The thing that makes our products new and innovative is that we think about what the user of the product out there needs. Does it add any value to him? It must add value to the way he does his work. Can he do it more efficiently? Can he put less strain on his body? And how can we improve the work environment? If we can check these questions, we have come a long way. And an example of this is our portable conveyor. 4 years ago, we put in a frequency converter which made it possible to adjust the speed of the conveyor, go backwards and forward, and connect them in a serial connection with up to 8 conveyors from 1 Master that controls the 7 slaves. This gives us a lot of possibilities, advantages, and good operational economics for our customer And that is also the reason why we can see that the sales of our conveyors are exploding at the moment. It is nice to be confirmed in what you do And now, we have inserted an IoT in our conveyors to make even more data visible in a digital dashboard to our customers, bringing a lot of new advantages visible. I don’t want to list all the advantages. Because there are a lot of advantages! I think you should go to the CleverConveyor right here. So, how are we innovative? We are super fortunate because we see a lot of end users coming to us when they have an idea that could improve their work. We have had collaborations with a nice share of end users. For us, it is important that when we make a deal with the end users, it is a fair deal that both parties are happy with. Of course, we are businesspeople, but we want them to leave with a feeling that they have been treated good. And we can see that the rumour spreads nice and slow, so, regularly, we are presented with new ideas that the end user feels will improve his professional life. And when it comes to their professional life, we are ready to listen What we do is, we make the end user put more words to what he wants, and then we collaborate on putting some numbers on it, so we can see: How big the advantage will be? What can it generate in time savings, ergonomics, and work environment? We also try to make a forecast of: What do we think the product will cost? What we can sell it to? Based on this, we sit down and assess if this is a good case, which we believe will make it into the market. And if that is the case, we start a project process where we start to uncover all the things that we think will make us end up with a calculation, and we have been out and uncovered: Are the benefits as great as we expect and believe? And then we run it through the processing mill. It is no secret that the rest of the market follows along. That is what is “horrible” about running a business. The others are not standing still, so we need to be running at full speed all the time. We are often out and about to get inspired. When we need inspiration, we just need to talk to our customers, our end users. Sure as day – an idea almost always appears. We are always encouraging our end users to come to us if they feel like they have a talent for inventing – we would love to be part of making the idea come to life What do I think of “innovation”? When I think about innovation, it can both be new inventions and the development of existing products. It is always nice to take an existing product that you know works well, and then add this add-on which makes it even better. Then you start on pretty secure ground. It can be like our CleverConveyor. Also, we are currently working on a project with our Concrete Roller, where an end user, who uses our product a lot, came to us with this great idea and we were like “if this succeeds, we have a new sales success”. I think of it all when I think about innovation – both from the user- and business perspectives. Because we know, and we can see, and we can hear that e.g., the green agenda is a must. We also know that the work environment is a must. Ergonomics is a must. And of course, the economy is a must as well. So, we must embrace it all when we create new products. Otherwise, we will not create a product that is a banger product. If I should come up with one good advice on innovation it would be: Be open. Invite to collaborations. Be open to crooked thoughts and angles. Patience – so it can just trickle down through all the no’s – settle a bit – and then take them from there. I can just see that innovation has been the foundation of our growth. So, I don’t want to be without innovation, and it will always be a very important part of our business.