“As with every business, you really need to think long and hard about what your goal is. Nine out of ten businesses have no clear idea of their goal. Then your project can never be successful. So you have to start by answering some key questions: what do you want to achieve, who are your customers and what do these customers want? Also for the projects I supervise at Consult2Grow, it’s important to first determine the goal, then to understand the local situation and only then start looking at the technology. I call it reverse engineering.
And don’t forget that cultivating a plant is one thing, but how are you going to market that plant afterwards? In Dubai, 90 percent of produce is imported, because local produce still isn’t good enough. So if you’re going to put a local product on the market, you have to take a good look at how to position it.”
Consult2Grow is a vertical farming consultancy based in Berkel en Rodenrijs, and co-owner of a vertical farm in Dubai. For their research, Consult2Grow likes to work with Grodan products, in order to test their own products, give feedback and optimize their products.
This story is part of the Gro-Hacks series, in which we ask partners and friends of Grodan about the lessons we can learn from their innovative entrepreneurial stories.