CONTACTS
 |
June 09 Issue - Employee Monthly Magazine MBA Program helps move Lab technology to marketEach year, master’s of business administration students descend on the Laboratory to assist Technology Transfer Division’s technology-management teams, Laboratory inventors, and regional entrepreneurs with a variety of business development and commercialization activities. These interns, who arrive in June, help Lab scientists and regional entrepreneurs answer important questions, such as how to define the product or service their technology can provide, who are the potential customers, how the technology or service stacks up to the competition, and what is the go-to-market strategy. This summer, 11 MBA interns will work at the Laboratory, according to Belinda Padilla of TT Division. The group of students is a notable increase from last year’s class of four. “The pool of candidates for the 2009 summer program exceeded 200, and the final 11 represent a diversity of technical, business, and geographic backgrounds and experience,” said Padilla. “This year’s class is particularly large to serve a variety of new regional and Laboratory programs, including LabStart and the new Energy Security Centers.” LabStart is a joint venture formed under the Los Alamos Venture Acceleration Initiative to strategically spin off technology-based companies from the Laboratory with an emphasis on establishing new businesses in Northern New Mexico. The program’s “Class of 2009” represents a variety of highly ranked business schools, such as Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Tennessee, University of Wisconsin, Carnegie Mellon, University of Texas at Austin, Wichita State University, University of California, Berkeley, and University of California, Los Angeles. The projects, which are selected by the students, support regional entrepreneurs and commercialization of Laboratory technology and new businesses based on LANL technology and expertise. Having students pick the projects in which they are interested helps ensure that they are excited by and engaged in the activity. “The LANL MBA internship is a full-contact activity,” explained Padilla. “Students have the opportunity to compare business theory with business realities in the world of technology transfer.” Many former MBA interns now work as technology-transfer professionals at the Laboratory and in private companies such as Google, BP Amoco, Skype, and Intel. Still others have taken the entrepreneurial leap, said Padilla. —Mig Owens
Other Headlines
Student Focus
|
Issues
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
