I'm studying international business at Avans Hogeschool in 's-Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands. Beginning next year, my studies will be totally different. For example, there will be projects based on real-life companies with real-life problems that occur in the real business world. I was lucky to be allowed into a pilot group for this new program of studies. So, My class already has done three of projects for companies, all of which had some sort of a subject like marketing and sales. The last project was about setting up a business, and I will tell you something about that.

My class was invited to the Eindhoven Technical University Eindhoven and there our most recent project was explained there. We had to create a business model for a startup that produces batteries for vehicles and wants to become active in other markets. They provided us like eight possible markets we could focus on. That sounded very cool to me but also very broad.

Maybe a bit too broad, because after we divided up into groups and started working on the project, a lot of problems showed up. Where do we have to start? Which market should we focus on? Since we are in an international studies,  do we have to do it in another country? These uncertainties sadly led to fights [disagreements] in the group, and that does not help the process. Luckily the fight ended and we could keep going,  and we decided that we were going to focus on the construction market. There is a lot of pollution in that market from the [gas-powered] vehicles, and batteries could change that.

To get a good substantiation [?] why to choose the construction market we wanted to get information and thoughts from participants in that specific market. First we called small and medium enterprises (SMEs) from all around the Netherlands to get a representative substantiation [?]. They were positive but also reserved about changing to battery-powered machinery because they were not sure if they are powerfull enough. Then we sent an email to a bigger national construction company and asked for an interview with the senior buyer. The senior buyer was kind and invited us for an interview. We learned from that interview that a lot of their clients want a green and pollution-free company to work for them, and green machinery is an option. So, there are a lot of possibilities in this market for bigger companies and SMEs that want to pollute less but do not know how. So we advised the company to invest in that market.

I hope I have given you a small insight into my last project and hope that you understand a bit more about my studies.

Have a nice day!