Peter van der Vlugt has been in the Ag Industry business for almost all of his life. Having grown up in The Netherlands on an Arable Farm with a contractor business, he initially decided to go other directions and study Electronics Engineering and (Embedded) Software Engineering. His professional working life started in an engineering company in Delft as Embedded Hardware/Software Engineer. But after 6 years of experience in Embedded Electronics, an opportunity to join an Agricultural Industry company occurred, and so in 1996 he went back to his ‘roots’ and joined the Vicon/Kverneland Group as Software Engineer. Recognizing that standardization in the Ag Industry was of crucial importance because of its multi-branded equipment; mr. van der Vlugt joined ISO Working Groups and worked for many years in the standardization group on the definition of ISO-11783 (aka ISOBUS), while being also responsible for the first introductions of ISOBUS equipment in Kverneland. In 2001 he changed his role to Project Manager and after a few years, in 2005, he was promoted to R&D Manager where he took the opportunity to lead and grow his R&D team further into the future of Ag Electronics developments. In 2008 the AEF (Ag Industry Electronics Foundation) was founded and mr. van der Vlugt was appointed as Steering Committee member in AEF, representing his company Kverneland Group as one of the founding members. In 2012 he was elected as chairman of the AEF organization, and is currently still acting in this position. Early 2014, mr. van der Vlugt accepted the position of CTO (Chief Technology Officer) in Kverneland Group Mechatronics, being responsible for Technology and Strategy development. In his role as CTO he was also responsible for the development of the Smart Farming Program within the Kverneland Group. Since July 2019, Peter is employed by the mother organization Kubota, for which he is now the General Manager of the Kubota Innovation Center for Europe. It’s main activities are Strategy and Vision development for Kubota, scouting and landscaping of technologies for Smart Agriculture in the technology domains Sensors, Data, AI and Robotics focusing on Specialty Crops, Hay/Forage and Indoor/Greenhouse farming. As such the Innovation Centers also act as Corporate Venture investing in Startups that fit the strategic directions for Kubota. Open Innovation and collaboration with external startups and partners are key for fast innovation steps.