Innovation can redefine your business. John Deere is a major company now associated with tractors and engines used in construction, forestry and farming. The original John Deere was a blacksmith who lived in nineteenth century New England. Farmers there often had to contend with very rocky soil. Many eventually left for the Midwest, where the soil was fabulous, except that it was very sticky and you had to keep stopping to scrape it off the plough shear. John Deere also moved to the Midwest and started by mending this broken equipment. However he then designed a new curved plough which could handle the sticky soil. He made it out of steel, which was incredibly expensive, but it worked and there was strong demand for it. The end result was that John Deere had to stop thinking of himself as a blacksmith and realise that he was going to become a plough manufacturer. From there he went on to design the first tractors that pulled ploughs that you could sit on. As innovation followed innovation so he had to think again about what business he was in.