Marion: I am Marion Verbücken, and I'm working in Philips for 32 years and mainly on innovative front-end innovation projects.
Bertrand:Bertrand Rigot, I'm also working on front-end innovation projects for now 23 years, and I'm actually recently shifting into operational excellence in the company.
Marion: Philips Lighting, as we know, we have luminaries for the city. But now more and more we focus on the quality of the light and we discover that light—certain light effects have a certain effect on humans, on animals, on food. So the effect of light is much more to our attention than ever before.
Marion: Already 80% of our arable land is already farmland. And we have no more land available, so it's clearly—we have to look at other solutions. And we know from horticulture, already for many many years, that in greenhouses certain light can contribute to have the plants growing faster, or better, and more consistent, and more qualitative. So therefore, it's a little step now to say, okay, because of urbanization, because of all the changes, because of the population growth, because of we need other means, we could step in there.
What we mean by city farming in Philips Lighting, is growing vegetables in a controlled environment. Meaning you have everything under control. Your water, your CO2, your temperature, the humidity, and the light. There's no natural light, but [it’s] all done by artificial light. This to ensure everything is free [from] pesticides, and also a very sustainable solution.
Bertrand:And high-tech at the same time, because we have control over every single parameter independently, and over time we can find what are the most performance growth recipes for a given plant.
Marion: The "GrowWise" facility is actually merely for us to research, to do tests, to try things out, but also as a communication [tool] to show and demonstrate basically what a city farm is. What we mean by it. And by letting people walk through it and experience [it], they can see for themselves.
Bertrand:To have a research facility [with] open doors makes complete sense, looking at the dynamics of the market now, what people want [is] to explore options by really coming and touching, and feeling, and being there.
Marion: One of the activities that we did was create experience flows, and this is based on the U.S. insights, so we went over there and interviewed different stakeholders.
Bertrand:We want to make sure that we put all the actors in a value chain on the flow. Not concentrating only on one of them, so that we understand relationship between these various actors as well, and how they tell about tell us about the experience at every stereotypical touchpoint of an engagement journey,
Marion: [Some] very important things that came jumping out [were] city farmers are, at this point, all very much in experimenting mode because nobody has the answer; nobody has the knowledge. Because it's a new provocation that will grow, that will be of great potential, but you have to make the threshold low.
At the moment there is a big gap between the big, expensive city farm systems that some can afford, versus the very kind of, hobbyist, in this kind of, making something affordable, fast to build, city farm so that is also very important.
Marion: Democratizing is also about sharing the knowledge and sharing the data. So how, from one farm to another, do you ensure that the knowledge is distributed so everybody can start doing what we do here in GrowWise. So we have to really start to grow towards each other and have empathy, that's the right word I think, empathy of understanding and willingness to understand each other, even when they don't speak the same language is very important.
So that's why also I found it important to spend time with you guys, because you guys are the new generation [who] will maybe come up with the next innovation and the next proposition that can help to bring this to the next level. And that's what I hope for.