Innovation: Shaping the Future of Reed Family Companies

Where would be be without Innovation?

Where would we be today if we settled on a rotary phone stuck to the wall and said, “Good Enough”. Where would we be without internet? We’d still be thumbing through dictionaries for information, relying on magazines for entertainment, and writing messages by hand; we would not have the world at our fingertips.

Innovation changed all that. The internet and smartphones transformed the way we live and work, closing the photo mat, Blockbuster Video, reshaping the music industry and forever changing retail sales. These shifts didn’t happen by accident, they happened because people refused to settle for “good enough” and kept pushing for better ideas, better tools, and better solutions.

In our industry, innovation means finding ways every day to do our jobs better, faster, and more efficiently than the competition. Every day we must learn from our success and our failures and thrive to be better. A mentor of mine once told me “When you know it all, you have given up learning.”

At RFC, embracing innovation isn’t optional, it’s the key to keeping us viable in today’s market and creating opportunities in industries we can’t even imagine yet.

Innovation means:

• Seeking new solutions, not just relying on old methods.

• Leveraging technology to increase safety, productivity, and quality.

• Encouraging every employee to share ideas that challenge the status quo.

• Anticipating what’s next instead of reacting to what’s already happened.

Together we have the opportunity and the responsibility to keep RFC on the leading edge. Let’s not just keep pace with change; let’s be the ones driving it.

Listen to the AI-generated song in the AHA Heart Walk video in this newsletter. It is an example of innovation from the BUILD team.