Innovation that starts on the factory floor

John Deere knows good ideas can come form anywhere –and anyone. The key is getting them onto the drawing board and into the field.

Nearly 200 years ago, John Deere wasn’t a household name. John Deere was a prairie blacksmith who used a polished steel saw blade to craft a better plow. His idea revolutionized farming and served as the inception of Deere & Company, now one of the world’s leading providers of advanced products and services for agriculture and construction.

In the same revolutionary spirit, John Deere in 2017 acquired a Silicon Valley startup, Blue River Technology, to craft smarter machines. Computer vision and machine learning can distinguish weeds from crops and spray herbicide only on the offenders. This precise weed control has the potential to cut herbicide volumes by 90%, reducing costs for farmers and benefiting the environment. “That’s a future we all want,” says John Stone, Deere & Company’s President, Worldwide Construction & Forestry and Power Systems.

Such innovation signals an ongoing focus on delivering machines and applications that continue to revolutionize the industries John Deere serves—a quality that landed it on Fast Company’s list of the Best Workplaces for Innovators.