Companies could learn a thing or too from the local farmer. Specifically, how to find profit in seemingly useless waste.
After a recent visit to Stone Barns farm in Terrytown, NY (as part of NYC’s Food and Wine Festival), I began thinking about the synergies local small farmers are utilizing to dig profit out of a difficult and unpredictable profession, and how the same synergies could be used by bulky corporations to squeeze profit out of increasingly sluggish business units.
Stone Barns is part of a growing agricultural movement that experiments in eco and animal friendly sustainable farming techniques. This means developing new strategies for sustainably producing more products with less natural resources, all the while meeting market demand.
As a part of these experiments, farmers are discovering new ways to convert previously useless waste into new enriching products.
ie: Stone Barns has an on-site poultry processing plant that handles all the turkey and chicken products produced on the farm, which as a result, discards a large amount of poultry meat waste products that are not suitable for consumption. Instead of throwing this waste away, they developed an innovative fertilizing system that quickly transforms the meat products, as well as other cardboard box and paper products, into a rich fertilizer that is applied to their grass pastures to support richer grazing land for their sheep.
How can this same mentality be used in bulky corporations? Well, companies like Google are already finding ways to covert their “waste” into new product innovations – with the primary example being Google’s “20 % Rule”.
“We offer our engineers “20-percent time” so that they’re free to work on what they’re really passionate about.”
- google.com
Although not specifically stated, it’s clear that Google understands the employee mentality and recognizes that, on a daily basis, workers will never be 100% focused on the company goals or company dictated projects. Instead of losing this 20% of worker “waste” time to unproductive personal activities like web surfing, Google encourages its employees to take this time to work on whatever projects they want. And, as a result, has successfully converted this “waste” time into some of the finest Google innovations of the recent years including Gmail, Adsense, and Google News.
So the question becomes: How is your company converting its waste? What profit are you missing out on?
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Lessons from a Farmer: Find Profit in Your Company’s Waste
Companies could learn a thing or too from the local farmer. Specifically, how to find profit in seemingly useless waste.
After a recent visit to Stone Barns farm in Terrytown, NY (as part of NYC’s Food and Wine Festival), I began thinking about the synergies local small farmers are utilizing to dig profit out of a difficult and unpredictable profession, and how the same synergies could be used by bulky corporations to squeeze profit out of increasingly sluggish business units.
Stone Barns is part of a growing agricultural movement that experiments in eco and animal friendly sustainable farming techniques. This means developing new strategies for sustainably producing more products with less natural resources, all the while meeting market demand.
As a part of these experiments, farmers are discovering new ways to convert previously useless waste into new enriching products.
ie: Stone Barns has an on-site poultry processing plant that handles all the turkey and chicken products produced on the farm, which as a result, discards a large amount of poultry meat waste products that are not suitable for consumption. Instead of throwing this waste away, they developed an innovative fertilizing system that quickly transforms the meat products, as well as other cardboard box and paper products, into a rich fertilizer that is applied to their grass pastures to support richer grazing land for their sheep.
How can this same mentality be used in bulky corporations? Well, companies like Google are already finding ways to covert their “waste” into new product innovations – with the primary example being Google’s “20 % Rule”.
“We offer our engineers “20-percent time” so that they’re free to work on what they’re really passionate about.”
- google.com
Although not specifically stated, it’s clear that Google understands the employee mentality and recognizes that, on a daily basis, workers will never be 100% focused on the company goals or company dictated projects. Instead of losing this 20% of worker “waste” time to unproductive personal activities like web surfing, Google encourages its employees to take this time to work on whatever projects they want. And, as a result, has successfully converted this “waste” time into some of the finest Google innovations of the recent years including Gmail, Adsense, and Google News.
So the question becomes: How is your company converting its waste? What profit are you missing out on?