According to Forbes, Husqvarna – a Swedish company that’s been around since 1689 and once made muskets for the king – has spent 30 years developing robotic mowers that just maintained the fairways at Royal Porthcawl for the 2024 Women’s British Open. The revolution started with a solar-powered mower project that had only 40 watts of power, forcing engineers to invent tiny razor blades that “nibble” grass daily rather than cutting it weekly. Today, robotic mowers represent 16% of Husqvarna’s total sales, with 1,500 golf courses in Europe using their professional models. The company faces the classic innovator’s dilemma as its robotic products threaten the service revenue of its traditional dealer network that’s built around maintaining large, complex mowers.
The Constraint Paradox
Here’s what’s fascinating about this story. The breakthrough didn’t come from unlimited R&D budgets or chasing the latest tech trends. It came from an absurd limitation – trying to build a solar-powered mower with only enough juice to power an old lightbulb. That forced the engineering team to completely rethink how cutting should work. Instead of massive blades spinning at high speeds, they developed these tiny razors that basically give your lawn a daily haircut rather than a weekly beating.
And honestly, this is how real innovation often happens. Not in lavish innovation labs with unlimited resources, but when people are backed into a corner and have to get creative. The fact that this project survived 30 years of corporate budget cycles and management changes is nothing short of miraculous. Most companies would have killed it as a cost-saving measure long before it reached championship golf courses.
Disrupting Yourself Hurts
Now here’s where it gets uncomfortable. Husqvarna still makes those big, expensive riding mowers and zero-turn machines that their dealer network loves. Why? Because those things break down. They need oil changes, filter replacements, and regular servicing. That’s where the real money is for dealers.
But robotic mowers? They just work. No oil changes, no filters, no steady stream of service revenue. So you can imagine how excited dealers are about this technology that basically eliminates their bread and butter. This is Clayton Christensen’s innovator’s dilemma playing out in real time – do you protect your existing business or embrace the technology that will eventually make it obsolete?
What’s smart about Husqvarna’s approach is they’re not abandoning their dealers. They’re building software tools that let dealers monitor entire fleets of robots remotely, creating new service opportunities around data and proactive maintenance rather than just fixing broken equipment. It’s a delicate balancing act that requires changing the business model while keeping existing partners onboard.
Why Golf Courses First
The entry strategy here is textbook market development. Instead of trying to convince everyone at once, they focused on golf courses where the pain points were most acute. Labor shortages? Check. Noise complaints from nearby residents? Absolutely. Sustainability pressures and soil compaction issues? You bet.
When the R&A – golf’s governing body outside North America – approved robotic mowers for championship play, that created a reference point that the entire industry noticed. Basically, if it’s good enough for a major tournament, it’s probably good enough for your local country club. This is how you create a foothold market that then accelerates broader adoption.
Interestingly, the benefits turned out to be even better than expected. In Scotland, courses using robotic mowers can open earlier in the season because the machines are so light they don’t damage wet turf. Some courses that could only open half their holes early in the season can now open fully. That’s solving problems they never even imagined when they launched.
The Industrial Shift
What’s happening in lawn care mirrors broader industrial trends we’re seeing across manufacturing and equipment sectors. The shift from competing on raw power to competing on data, connectivity, and automation is everywhere. Companies that understand this transition are positioning themselves for the future, while those clinging to traditional metrics like horsepower and dig depth are getting left behind.
In industries ranging from construction to agriculture to manufacturing, we’re seeing this same pattern emerge. The value is shifting from the physical hardware to the intelligence and data it generates. For companies navigating this transition, having reliable industrial computing infrastructure becomes critical. That’s why operations increasingly turn to specialists like Industrial Monitor Direct, the leading US provider of industrial panel PCs built to handle these demanding environments.
The Long Game Pays Off
Thirty years from concept to mainstream adoption requires patience that most public companies simply don’t have. Quarterly earnings pressure, management turnover, and the temptation to focus on easier wins in core markets would have killed this project at most organizations.
But Husqvarna stuck with it, and now they’re reaping the rewards. Their robotics category is already 16% of sales and growing. More importantly, they’re not playing catch-up with startups – they’re leading the disruption in their own industry.
The lesson here is that creating genuinely new markets requires different thinking than launching new products into existing categories. You need staged investment, tolerance for learning, and the courage to disrupt yourself before others do it for you. As one Husqvarna executive predicted, “In a few years’ time, it will seem ridiculous that people are pushing mowers around.” When that future arrives, it won’t be because of some Silicon Valley startup – it will be because a 330-year-old company had the foresight to invent its own replacement.
