Silicon Valley has dominated the public conversation about innovation in recent decades, but true innovation—the kind that changes industries and elevates businesses beyond their competition—can happen anywhere. In fact it must, if a company aims to stay in the game for the long term. At our family-run duck farm in Pennsylvania, Joe Jurgielewicz & Son, our relentless commitment to putting People First, whether they are customers, employees, or even the animals we raise, has led us to some unusual innovations and initiatives that have helped solidify us as a leader in our industry.

I am the second-generation leader of Joe Jurgielewicz & Son, and like my father, a veterinarian by training. When I first joined the company, it was as the first full-time, in-house vet for our ducks, which at that point numbered 5 million per year. Although my dad was a vet too, he was busy building the business and couldn’t devote much time to veterinary work, so until I joined and created our veterinary services department, most of that work was subbed out. This is important to our innovation story, because this shift allowed us to address issues on an entirely different timeline than we had been able to when our vets came from the outside.

The way we had been running the business in its first chapter, diagnosing health issues in our poultry required shipping samples to external labs, which led to delays. If we had a group of sick birds, from the time that our farmers realized that there was a problem, to the time it took to get staff out there to get samples, to the time it took those samples get to a lab, the time that lab got around to working up the diagnostics, until we finally got the diagnostics, might be four or five days. Well, that’s too long. It’s just like medicine in humans; the quicker we can get on a disease, the quicker we can get on a medical breakthrough.

Once I was in-house and we had established our veterinary services department, we built our own diagnostic lab. We started building a team, got some summer intern students, and recruited them to train them to be duck people. We saw an opportunity to do all that work our way.

Now, with a well-established in-house veterinary team, we can get ahead of it by about two to three days, and have the diagnostics done and come up with an effective treatment in about half the time. This has increased our efficiency, improved the health of our flock, and contributed significantly to our growth and success. We didn’t stop there. At first, even when we were able to diagnose in-house, once we had a diagnosis, we still had to bring in vaccines from the outside, which added some time and expense to the process. We thought we could do better, so we took the pathogens causing disease in our birds and started making our own vaccines. It’s a lot more protective to the individual flocks to use a vaccine specifically made for them versus a commercially produced one. And we can make it at a tenth of the cost.

Another important innovation grew out of this team as well. Our veterinary services team, which by that point included a geneticist in addition to the vets and vets in training, was primarily doing genetic selections based on appearance, physical weight, and structural integrity. In order to evaluate bones and muscle mass, we had to look at the inside of a bird–a leg, for example– and the only way to do that was to euthanize the bird and open it up. What if it was an amazing bird? One that we wanted to keep for breeding? This was a problem, and we were losing great birds, so we started to look for a solution. I wanted to figure out a way to look inside the birds and keep them alive at the same time.

We realized, there are things in the human medical world that can do that. An MRI or a CT scanner was the obvious answer, but the ones they make for humans are obviously the wrong size. I was looking all around and discovered that in Europe, they have developed a CT unit that they use specifically for human heads. It was developed for stroke patients, so they have mobile units. Even better. Our partners worked with us on this new usage, which they had never imagined for their device, and now we use them for our birds. We can fit a whole bird inside; it’s the perfect size.

I should pause to clarify that our industry is very niche. Our world is very different than other poultry. As a result, we have to do everything. If we were a chicken company, we wouldn’t be worrying about these problems; we would buy our genetics like everybody else in the world does. We would buy breeding stock from one of the two international mega companies, and that would be that. The genetics would not be our concern. But in our world, we have to do everything–from the genetics all the way through the processing plant–ourselves. So, this orientation toward innovation is not just a choice; it’s a survival strategy.

A final example of innovation at Joe Jurgielewicz & Son is less medical and scientific, and more oriented toward reducing waste. Sustainability is a cornerstone of our philosophy and Purpose. With the rise of pet ownership and increasing demand for high-quality, natural pet foods, we saw an opportunity to turn underutilized duck parts into a premium product. Enter Duck Country Pet Treats, a line of single-ingredient pet treats made from duck hearts, livers, gizzards, feet, necks, and even heads.

Historically, these parts were either sold cheaply to bulk pet food manufacturers or discarded. By processing them in-house and packaging them as premium treats, we were able to increase the value of these byproducts twentyfold. In this case, it’s about paying attention to trends beyond our own industry. People want limited-ingredient, high-quality pet food. We had exactly what they needed all along.

All of these strategies and initiatives, and our general approach to innovation, have served us well. We are a clear leader in our industry, and we have grown significantly–from a flock of 5 million birds when I joined the company to about 13 million now.

At its core, the true reason for our success isn’t just cutting-edge innovation or sustainability—that orientation is grounded in something even more fundamental. We are an Evergreen® company with a culture of deep customer service and a People First orientation. Whether we are supplying Michelin-starred chefs with dry-aged ducks or working with distributors to provide the highest-quality products, we operate with a philosophy that no request is too complex. If a client calls us and says, “I need a very specific type of duck for my restaurant,” we’ll figure out how to make it happen. We are driven by our willingness to adapt to customer needs, rather than forcing our clients to fit into a rigid business model. This, more than anything else, has driven our innovation and allowed us to stand apart from our competitors.

Innovation isn’t just about finding the next big thing. It’s not just, who can create the next Google or Amazon. It’s about making every part of your business better, every single day. We pride ourselves on being nimble and we know that, if we’re not growing, we’re dying. That means continually looking for ways to push ourselves and stay ahead of the curve. Over time, if you are committed to the long term, the difference it will make is enormous.