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.