Page 35 - Forbes Magazine-September 30, 2018

FORBES
BrandVoice WITH KPMG

FROM TRACTOR MAKERS TO LIBRARIES, SMART ORGANIZATIONS ARE TURNING

DIGITAL THREATS INTO OPPORTUNITY By Leonard Brody

ohn Deere’s digital technology customer expectations it has created and chemicals by 80 percent or more. Stone
J
lab in San Francisco sometimes the unexpected competition it can bring. feels he has a strong pitch to machine-
raises eyebrows. The 181-year-old tractor maker has turned learning engineers who want to make a
“There’s a WeWork space not too to software, connected sensors, machine difference: “You can apply your expertise
far away, so startup people walk by our vision and deep learning so it can keep to building a better spam fi lter, or you can
offi ce and say, ‘Hey, what’s John Deere delivering value to the farm customers apply your expertise to reducing herbi-
doing here?’” said John Stone, senior it serves. cides in farms. It’s pretty compelling,
vice president of Deere’s Intelligent “We opened that offi ce out there to get I think.”
Solutions Group. ourselves plugged into the startup tech There’s no paint-by-numbers playbook
Now and then, someone pops in scene,” Stone said. After it opened in San for mastering digital disruption, but there
looking to buy a tractor. Francisco, Deere acquired Silicon Valley are solid guidelines. A fi rst step is to
Set amid tech companies like LinkedIn machine-vision startup Blue River understand your core value to customers
and Salesforce is exactly where Deere Technology. Its “see and spray” system — and strengthen it using emerging
wants to be. Countless companies, large uses cameras and AI to let machines in technologies. It may be a product line or
and small, have been blown to bits the fi eld recognize and target individual service. Often it’s about a relationship, a
because they underestimated the impact weeds with herbicides, instead of spraying trusted brand.
of digital disruption, the changes in a whole fi eld. It can reduce use of

90 | FORBES SEPTEMBER 30, 2018