About the position

• The Alliance of Bioversity-CIAT aims to develop a step-by-step guide for the agriculture research community on a Product Development Process that is effective in bringing research and innovation to the market. The objective of the guide is to provide agricultural scientists with an evidence-based guide for how to plan, execute, support and eventually exit from the process of taking research innovations to market through scaling service providers. This guide has significant opportunity for impact by improving efficacy of agricultural tools and services, as well as informing the agriculture research institutions about priorities to create an enabling environment for high impact innovations entering industry. Without these changes, the metaphorical ‘valley of death’ will continue to swallow up the majority of digital products resulting from agriculture research processes.
• Deliverable: Brief report (e.g. 15-20 pages) describing the steps for taking research-driven innovations into accessible services and platforms that reach users to inform key decisions. The report should cover best practices from literature and practical experience in the innovation commercialization space (e.g. Tech Transfer or Incubator programs for example). The report must be relevant to agriculture scientists and therefore will also need to be grounded in recent and relatable product development processes case studies. We will provide the student with access to 2-3 scientists and their teams working on digital product development such as a digital climate advisory system (DACA) and a pest & weed early warning system.

Location: Mostly remote, with a one-week trip to Kigali, Rwanda strongly recommended as part of the case study development.

Duration: Minimum time commitment of 3 months, full time.

Responsibilities:

• Literature review: Establish the foundational structure for the report based on literature of digital tool development, service design, scaling innovation and entrepreneurship.
• Subject matter expert interviews: Identify and conduct interviews with experts from university incubators, private sector R&D, and CGIAR innovation leads to gather experiences and perspectives on ideal product development steps, success factors, and enabling conditions.
• Case study development: Spend one week with scientists developing digital products to develop case studies that illustrate the steps outlined based on literature and subject matter interviews.
• Documentation: Write up findings in a report following the deliverable description above.

Requirements

Key requirements and experience:

• Master’s student in a related field, such as Business or Design.
• Independence: Demonstrates ability for self-management to deliver against short timelines, even in a remote working environment.
• Empathy: Has ability to understand and build rapport with people to gain insights from subject matter experts and scientists. This will be important for the development of a guide that is relatable and tailored to the agriculture research context.