Blue-sky thinking at Husqvarna Innovation Expo

With a heritage stretching back almost 400 years to the early 17th century, when a state-owned rifle factory was established in Jönköping by the King of Sweden, Husqvarna has reinvented itself several times over the years.

Its manufacturing base on the banks of the Huskvarna waterfalls in Southern Sweden is testament to this, having produced everything from musket pipes to sewing machines and motorbikes to the first Swedish typewriter. Today, the company is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of garden and forestry power tools.

It’s fair to say that the story of Husqvarna through the centuries has been one of chameleon-like transformation and resilience; and both are attributes that should serve it well in managing the current climate of market disruption and change.

To prepare itself for the future, the company has embarked on a strategy called ‘Profitable Growth’, where the key driver is long-term investments in product and market development, a driver that all business units and functions are behind.

And, as part of this, the Husqvarna division hosted its 2017 Innovation Expo this week, an event that the Supplier-Enabled Innovation Community had the privilege to attend and which brought together a cross-functional group of employees, together with board-level executives, suppliers and start-ups.

The event was fascinating to be a part of, with insights into its SEI approach being put front and center, visible support from the CEO, a corporate innovation theme running through the day, and a dusting of inspiration from some of those companies breaking the mould in global commerce. Here’s a few takeaways.

• Innovation is messy, which means structure must be put in place. This was done on the day by Johan Hallendorff, director of primary and concept development, under the watchful eye of divisional president Pavel Hajman and group CEO Kai Wärn. Hallendorf provided a logical expression of how innovation should be managed, breaking it into core, adjacent and disruptive innovations.
• SEI must be closely aligned with the corporate-innovation approach, and in Husqvarna’s case it was presented as being one of the fundamental building blocks of their strategy. Providing a path via which supplier innovations can be piped into product or process development discussions is the goal.
• Strategic suppliers love SEI, a fact that was well illustrated by one of Husqvarna’s that took to the stage to discuss how it feels far happier to invest on behalf of its client, and far more confident that it can deliver significant results with the support of a clearly defined and widely supported programme.
• The right suppliers can energize and inspire a room of relevant business stakeholders; as was the case in Sweden when a small but highly interesting and relevant group of companies took part. The companies in question brought home the expertise and resources that exists in the supplier ecosystem very clearly.
• Executive support can help to build significant momentum, so it was great to see CEO Kai Wärn deliver an impromptu speech in support of the innovation drive, and SEI specifically. He recognizes the power that supplier intellectual capital can bring, and is keen to harness it.

These are just a few thoughts from our two days in Husqvarna, but we also gained deep insight into the company’s industry 4.0 and digital-manufacturing strategy and explored in depth the role that we in procurement can play in bringing our companies closer to relevant start-ups with leading innovation.

And on that last point, there will be more of in another post.

David Rae