A 360° take on innovation

After 40 years of innovation, we have reached a level of maturity, from an intuitive to a structured approach, which enables us to clearly define the two types of innovation that drive how we pursue value: evolution innovation and exploration innovation. These two types of innovation are now at the core of Premier Tech’s Innovation Model.

Evolution innovation is under the responsibility of each Business Group at Premier Tech and relies on a thorough understanding of the markets in which they operate. It focuses on optimizing and developing existing offers within their strategic markets, ensuring they remain relevant over time by responding with agility to the ever-changing market needs.

Exploration innovation, conducted through the BlueHorizon process, is driven on a more global scale within the Premier Tech ecosystem. It aims to identify new opportunities and develop solutions to address them. It must represent a significant leap in technology or client-perceived value within existing markets or enable us to enter new ones — whether emerging or well established — beyond our main sectors.

These two interdependent types of innovation coexist within the organization and support the strategic planning process. By combining evolution innovation with exploration innovation, we maintain a balance between short-term priorities and long-term opportunities, addressing both immediate challenges and future perspectives.

BlueHorizon is a process created by Premier Tech to support exploration innovation and embed it into our objectives to ensure long-term, organic growth. This process, distinct from and complementary to strategic planning, provides clear alignment and the agility required to identify and seize new opportunities.

In a diverse and ever-changing environment, innovation can take many different forms. The two projects below are clear examples of evolution innovation from distinct perspectives — the transformation of a business model and the improvement of an existing product.

As part of a strategic shift, the Business Unit of Premier Tech Water and Environment in the UK entirely redefined its business model. It reoriented its traditional manufacturing and commercialization activities for wastewater treatment systems, previously operating in a red ocean market — a highly competitive environment saturated with similar offers —, toward a business model focused on turnkey support and integrated services for residential homeowners.

This pivot enabled the Group to realign toward high-potential activities that deliver greater end value to homeowners. By focusing on the synergies between design, installation, maintenance and client support activities in the UK, the Premier Tech Water and Environment team deployed a distinctive service and support offer built around the Ecoflo® product line.

This innovative approach not only strengthens Premier Tech Water and Environment’s competitiveness in the UK market but also opens new long-term growth perspectives across various geographic markets.

Driven by the ambition to better support its clients and deliver value, Premier Tech Growers and Consumers is committed to constantly improving and evolving its products to meet the challenges faced by greenhouse growers. As a result, the Group’s IR&D teams have created a new ready-to-use grow bag for the PRO-MIX® HP® product line to address an issue specific to this market. 

The bag now serves as a growing container, which enables direct production without transplanting. This functionality also reduces labour costs, eliminates the need for plastic containers, and lowers the environmental footprint associated with client operations. The full value of this innovation consequently lies in these various key features.

This new packaging was developed through an interaction-driven process. It is the result of close collaboration between our teams, suppliers, and clients — a synergy in which each stakeholder contributed their expertise to design an innovative solution that delivers value to the end user. 

Each phase of development was guided by a clear, shared objective: to streamline how clients interact with our product through an integrated, value-creating approach. The result is a ready-to-use grow bag that simplifies the use of our products and reduces the environmental footprint of producers, while enabling them to double their profitability per cubic foot of growing media required in their operations.