Strategic Business Developer - Intern

As a Strategic Business Development Intern, you will support the Innovation Center Europe team (ICE) with the realization of a study on business model innovation in Agriculture Machinery. You will participate in the European NextGen project, where Kubota is working with other stakeholders to create the future “Orchard hands-free”. As the name suggests, the idea is to develop new technologies that can reduce the farmer’s workload by providing smart farming solutions. You will support the NextGen project by defining the most suitable business model to be applied to smart farming solutions. Additionally, you will also help ICE with the definition of the level of mechanizability of various orchard types in Europe. You will support by doing data labelling through visual assessment of the different orchards’ features by using remote sensing images. The annotation will be executed using QGIS software. The study will be central in defining the machines’ market potential in different regional areas throughout Europe.

What You Will Gain:

By the end of this internship, you will have gained insights into how innovation is conducted inside a manufacturing company. You will learn about business model innovation with a focus on smart farming agriculture by considering real-life solutions. You will gain hands-on experience on how to handle stakeholders and interviewing them to gain valuable insights for your project. You will also have the opportunity to learn the basics of one of the most important Geographic Information Systems (QGIS) used in agriculture and environmental studies. And experience how a data-driven analysis can steer the internal conversation about the market potential of different solutions.

Key Responsibility:

1st Activity

• Realize an exploratory literature review on innovative business models. The aim is to make a cross-industrial analysis to see which innovative business model could be applied in the AgTech industry.
• Define the business model of various innovative AgTech solutions. This will be done by working with the business model canvas proposed by Osterwalder and Pigneur.
• Collect information about the value proposition, value creation, and value capture of the different AgTech solutions using the information already available as well as by conducting interviews with start-ups and companies (together with a company’s supervisor).

2nd Activity

• Help with the data labelling (polygons, point layers, etc.) for an orchard structure study that we are creating internally.
• The work will be done using the open-source software QGIS. This software is pivotal in Agriculture and Environmental studies to understand land use, cover classification, environmental impact assessment, biodiversity monitoring, etc.
• No previous knowledge of the software is required.
• The study aims to know precisely, through remote sensing (satellite data), the orchard structure of different crops such as olive groves, nuts, vineyards, and so on.

Skill And Requirements

• A BSc or MSc student in the field of Business Studies, Economics, Agriculture, or related fields.
• The internship period is for at least 4 months (longer is preferred).
• At least 3 working days a week (Nieuw-Vennep or WUR offices), preferred longer.
• Knowledge of agriculture is nice to have.
• No previous knowledge of QGIS software is required.
• Fluent in English, both spoken and written.