MBA Internships Success Stories

SatWest

As a local business, SatWest has taken advantage of the tremendously innovative and fresh minds of the MBA students who work in the Technology Transfer Division. As a relatively young business, launched in 1999 by President and founder Brian Barnett, SatWest has proposed projects for the Summer Internship Program numerous times and has had three picked up and researched in the past two years. The company has benefited greatly from working with the MBA students.

Based on the MBA Interns' recommendations, Barnett was able to make important business decisions leading to the development of his own flexible solar charger and a company to sell the chargers called SolStar and implemented marketing strategies aimed at niche and target consumers and potential business partners.

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"This project was one of the many projects that I worked on over the summer and it was an excellent project because I learned a great deal about how to conduct a technical marketing analysis. The internship overall was invaluable because of the experience learned through a variety of projects that I had the opportunity to work on and knowing that in the end your projects actually make a difference."

—Marcus Lucero, 2005 MBA Intern from New Mexico State University

APJeT

APJeT is a spinoff company based in Santa Fe, launched to commercialize the Atmospheric-Pressure Plasma Jet (APPJ). Dr. Gary S. Selwyn, CEO and the former Los Alamos scientist who invented APPJ, established his spinoff company in 2000 and now has 9 employees. The APPJ technology can be used for multiple surface treatment applications including non-aqueous cleaning, adhesion promotion, etching, and film deposition.

In 2005, the Technology Transfer Division Summer Interns were asked to research the polyethylene terephthalate (PET) film market in order to provide APJeT with information to evaluate venturing into a new market. APJeT’s current market focus is in the textile industry, while PET films are commonly used in the food and beverage packaging industry.

The interns investigated the PET film market, determined major applications in the field, researched growth trends, the competition and analyzed the advantages and disadvantages of PET films to determine a proper market for APJeT to invest in.

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"My internship at LANL was a chance to get exposure to technologies I would rarely get to see or work with anywhere else,” said Pahwa – who now works at 3M in strategic business development. “We chose to work with APJeT because their technology was so interesting and it has a real chance to revolutionize that space."

"I learned a lot about Small Business Innovation Research grants and I learned to quickly analyze markets for new technologies."

—Vishal Pahwa, 2005 MBA intern from the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas

Engineering Institute

In 2002, the Engineering Science and Application Division, or ESA, at Los Alamos and the University of California, San Diego, or UCSD, Jacobs School of Engineering joined to propose the establishment of an Engineering Institute to be located at the Los Alamos Research Park. The Institute focuses on conducting mission-driven, multidisciplinary engineering research and recruiting, revitalizing and retaining current and future staff necessary to support Los Alamos' stockpile stewardship responsibilities.

Being that there are numerous engineering institutes that offer classes and programs similar to those that ESA and UCSD were proposing, they decided to ask for help from the MBA Summer Internship program.

The intern analyzed the competition and market for the Institute. Through research and surveys, she determined the types of courses and programs that should be offered, what students would be interested, marketing strategies to get students interested and into the Institute, the budget determining a cost structure, and estimates on revenue and funds needed to start the Institute.

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"I learned that there is a lot more work than most people realize involved in starting something like the Engineering Institute," Meyer said. "It really takes many people at many levels working together with a unified vision to implement this.  I also learned that implementing change at large organizations takes time and getting the right decision makers involved."

-Amy Meyer, 2002 MBA intern from Stanford University

Graphitic Structures

When a Los Alamos scientist decided to look into a spin-off company based on the graphitic structure technology he had invented, the Technology Transfer Division sought guidance on the outlook of a small business from their MBA Summer Internship program. Aluminum, copper and various composites are currently used to make heatsinks, but are beginning to show numerous limitations. Significant research was being done to make heatsinks from plastics and graphite because these materials were believed to have less limitations.  

Collin Webster worked on the project to determine the potential market for a new company using the graphitic structure technology. He learned about the technology and the material science behind it in order to study the competition, researched the potential applications for the technology, performed a competitive analysis, an analysis of the material itself and researched possible markets for the technology.

"I learned a lot about how to evaluate a market and how to quantify or measure the lead the product has. This product was better than the other products but the other products had a head start. This was really a technology evaluation project so you got to play venture capitalist for a moment and ask yourself, would you give this person your money?"

—Collin Webster, 2005 MBA Intern from the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University

LED

The Technology Transfer MBA Internship Program isn’t only geared toward helping regional companies develop their business, but it is also aimed at helping Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists find a place for their inventions in the marketplace. Many of the MBA interns have science backgrounds, and these interns often choose to work with inventors seeking to take their invention from the Lab to a commercial market.

In 2004, the MBA students were asked to investigate the market for Quantum Dot-based LEDs by Förster Energy Transfer. These quantum dots are semiconductor nanocrystals used in such applications as solid state lighting, which industry experts, government officials, and independent consultants all agree that solid state lighting will revolutionize the lighting market through the introduction of energy efficient, long lasting, and more versatile light sources.

Interns researched and analyzed the market for the quantum dot LEDs the market size, growth and potential current applications for the quantum dots. Their team also delivered an operational analysis along with their recommendations based on their findings.

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"What we ended up delivering was a comprehensive market study from a feasibility point of view. Victor [lead scientist on the Quantum Dot project] and his team were interested in finding out if this was the type of endeavor that could be spun out as a start-up company or if the licensing was a better commercialization option. We determined that doing so would be very capital intensive and that a licensing agreement with an industry partner was preferable to starting their own company based on the quantum dots for LEDs."

—Garett Vail, 2004 MBA intern from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth University