Innovation in Smart Farming
Students work on developing their own ideas to solve current agricultural issues within the topic of Smart Farming. Support is provided by members of USYS, MTEC, Student Project House and external guests, therefore connecting students with multiple options of entrepreneurial development. Throughout the course, students are encouraged to be creative, critical and develop an entrepreneurial mindset, which helps them developing key skills for their future employability.
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Course description
Project description
Despite the strong interest of students in Agricultural Sciences in making a difference in the current food production systems, they don’t enroll in courses on entrepreneurship. Such courses have gained importance around the world in recent years, given the recognition of the key role that entrepreneurship plays in knowledge valorization and as driver for economic growth and social change. In order to help changing this situation, the course “Innovation in Smart Farming” was created as part of the activities of ETH Studio AgroFood to help students navigate the waves of digital disruption in the agricultural sector.
Smart Farming was chosen as the framework of the course given the key role that agriculture plays in achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and in the current challenges and opportunities offered by digitalization in the AgroFood sector. The chance offered by digitalization and new technologies to redefine food production systems, including their business model, requires a new generation of professionals with the necessary tools to take an active role in the development of solutions in agriculture.
The main goals of the course are to engage students with SDGs challenges and encourage their entrepreneurial mindset to develop solutions within the topic of Smart Farming. Additionally, the course strives to serve as a bridge to other entrepreneurial opportunities offered at ETH Zurich in the AgroFood domain. This is reflected by the active support of the chair of Entrepreneurship from ETH Zurich (D-MTEC) and the Student Project House (SPH). Domain expertise in Smart Farming is provided by the Crop Science group at ETH Zurich and experts from other institutions such as Agroscope and the private startup sector.
Students work in teams (3 to 4 members) for 10 weeks on what is defined as the prelaunch phase of an entrepreneurial model. This is reflected on a clear focus on problem definition, opportunity recognition/assessment and first mapping of existing challenges and solutions (Impact Canvas Model). Additionally, students develop a very early prototype of their idea, which they pitch in two presentations during the course and give a weekly journal input, which allows having a constant feedback about their experience throughout the course and tackle the sessions to their needs.
