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Corporate Perspective: Martin Swarbrick

President and CEO, Bison Gear and Engineering Corp.

Editor at Large, Praveen Gupta, Interviewed Martin Swarbrick of Bison Gear and Engineering
Corporation during the summer of 2010 about innovation efforts at Bison.

1. Where do you see Bison in next 5-10 years in terms of its customer base and revenue?
We see Bison’s customer base broadening both in terms of end-use as well as geographic markets.
Innovation will play a key role in both customer expansion strategies. Innovative new products we are
developing and introducing permit us to expand into higher value markets compared to our core
business. For example, our participation in the packaging machinery automation market has only been
peripheral in the past. Certain of our innovative new products, like Bison’s ServoNOW™ intelligent
motion control systems and our stainless steel SANIMotor™ inverter duty gearmotors that use a
patented encapsulation technology give us the opportunity to springboard our penetration of that market
by being truly differentiated with a convincing value proposition. These same types of innovative
products give us a unique competitive advantage to expand our geographic markets in the globally
competitive marketplace in which we compete.
Over the next 5 years, our strategic plan objective is a doubling of current revenues, achieved
through annual double digit growth plans, supported by the successful introduction of innovative
products and the expansion of our core business and customer base through not only product
innovation, but more innovative ways of doing business with our core customers.

2. In your strategic plan how do you plan to achieve the above business objectives?
Our strategic plan is based on protecting and expanding our core business and deploying innovative
solutions to grow at rates beyond the core. We see product innovation and acquisitions of an innovative
nature contributing to greater than one third of annual revenues as we approach the fifth year of our
strategic plan.

3. What is the role of innovation for achieving the profitable growth?

It could be said that innovation is the key element of our growth plan, because our core markets could
be considered relatively mature and consolidating. While some of those market segments are forecast
to have relatively robust growth, many others, for a variety of reasons, we see as declining. We also see
there are limitations from a profitability standpoint in just chasing market share. Therefore, it is
imperative that Bison pursues innovation which enables us to penetrate new markets with a
differentiated value proposition as a growth tool.

4. What are the critical resources that BISON would need to achieve the above results?
While access to capital and smooth supply chain relationships are important to achieving our
objectives, the human innovation element is critical. As an American manufacturer celebrating its 50th
anniversary, Bison is proud to have many associates with tenures of 10, 20, 30 or more years. We
recognize the importance of knowledge management as portions of our associate team reach retirement
age. Quite some time ago, we formally recognized that it was important to capture "tribal knowledge"
and be able to transfer that effectively to a changing team of associates. The fact that one in seven of
our associates is an engineer further emphasizes the importance of knowledge management to our
future success.

5. Do you have a critical mass of innovative people who you think are ‘innovative’ to help you
achieve your objectives?
Bison has always had a reputation for being able to help solve customer problems with innovative
solutions and we continue to build on that asset by ensuring we have a proper mix of "seasoned
professionals" as well as enthusiastic and creative new hires, along with personnel from outside our
industry who can often bring new, innovative insights.

Volume 2 · Number 2 · 2010

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