Expanding Customer Interviews with Master of Business and Science Students at KGI

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The insight we gained from conducting 130 interviews in the agriculture ecosystem for the National NSF I-corps team program and the NSF Beat-the-Odds boot camp was priceless. We learned about our customers’ needs and were able to develop a strategy to focus our product development efforts on specific customers, market segments, and pests. We learned how to address the farmer’s needs, and identify key partners, resources, and more. Despite our 130 interviews, only 55 of them were growers. That is because August and September are the peak harvest time. The farmers were not available to take our calls because they were out in the fields. We wanted to continue our customer discovery and interview more farmers when they were less busy. Luckily, we had the opportunity to sponsor a class project at the Keck Graduate Institute (KGI) Master of Business and Science (MBS) program in Fall 2020. We thought since the harvest is over, farmers would have time to talk to us and with the students’ help, we could interview more farmers. Keep reading to discover what we found.