February 2023 - 8

perspectives
BY LEIGH ANN BURBES
Innovation Is a Team Effort
Writer William S. Burroughs famously said,
" When you stop growing, you start dying. " As a
green industry, we understand all too well the
literal interpretation as it applies to plants,
but it is easy to lose sight of the figurative
meaning. We are all creatures of habit,
but to grow the bottom line, a company
must build innovation into their strategy.
Whether you're reinventing an old idea or
introducing a market disrupting product/
concept, innovation should be at the heart
of any organization.
My journey with T.O. Plastics began as
Leigh Ann
Burbes is senior
market manager
at T.O. Plastics
in Clearwater,
Minnesota. She is
a member of GPN's
40 Under 40 Class
of 2022 and can be
reached at lburbes@
toplastics.com.
a regional sales manager. Shortly after,
I quickly jumped at the opportunity to
fill a hybrid role as the senior market
manager. This career transition came at
a perfect time as I became a first-time
mom with all the chaos and joy ... and, let's
face it, the exhaustion that comes along with
parenthood. I was able to focus my efforts
behind the scenes and spend more time at
home with my family. T.O. Plastics has always
had a family-first culture and is aware that
a company's growth is a byproduct of the
team's growth, not the other way around. As
senior market manager, I was able to serve as
a liaison between engineering, operations and
the sales managers to manage new product
development. For us to continue to grow, we
needed our sales team qualifying and bringing
the ideas in for new products, but not getting
bogged down by the internal processes and
necessary research to follow the project from
conception to production.
NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
Our new product development team
represents the collective input of our
commercial team, engineering and marketing.
When it is customer specific, we include
the sales manager, and along the way
pull in additional stakeholders like our
8 FEBRUARY 2023 GPNMAG.COM
operations team or industry partners, such
as automation equipment manufacturers or
tag manufacturers. It is a team effort that
requires each member to contribute their area
of expertise. We structure the process with the
following four stages: discover, define, develop
and deploy.
It's not always
about being
the first to the
market with a
new product or
process, it's about
the journey it
took to get there
and the result.
First is the discovery stage, where we identify
the need. This can be a simple modification
to an existing product, like automation
compatibility, or a brand-new product. We
gather the voice of the customer to determine
specifications and take the time to learn how
the customer uses the product in every aspect
of their operation. This stage is often the
longest and most important of the four. It can
also sometimes be the beginning and the end
of a project.
http://www.GPNMAG.COM
February 2023

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of February 2023
