How a 330-year-old Swedish company is disrupting itself with robots

FORBES

Picture a golf course at dawn. Traditionally, you’d hear the rumble of diesel engines as heavy mowers lumber across fairways, compacting soil and guzzling fuel. At Royal Porthcawl in South Wales, site of the 2024 Women’s British Open, something different happened. The fairways were cut overnight by a fleet of small, silent robots — the first time a major championship has been maintained this way.

This wasn’t a startup’s moonshot. It was the culmination of a 30-year journey by Husqvarna, a Swedish company founded in 1689 that once made muskets for the king. Today, the firm is methodically dismantling the very market it helped create — professional lawn care equipment — by replacing it with something radically simpler.

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