Internships give MBAs the opportunity to ‘shine’

Spring 2006 - Internships can develop into long-term relationships, as Paul Scheidt, (MBA May ’06, Product Innovation Management) discovered. This spring, he is advancing from intern to full-time employee at Cree, a Raleigh-area semiconductor company that specializes in manufacturing semiconductors from silicon carbide (SiC).

For Allison Najman (MBA August ’06, Marketing), the internship provided additional insight into corporate marketing.

Both also credit their Product Innovation Management class, taught by Mitzi Montoya-Weiss, for providing the knowledge and skills they needed.

Cree’s focus on technology was a particularly strong fit for Scheidt, who has a background bachelors’ degrees from NC State in computer engineering and electrical engineering (’03). That made it easy for him to understand and talk about Cree’s product lines, including LCD television screens and monitors. Cree was the first company to invent a high brightness blue LED in 1990, based on SiC, and its main business areas now are lighting [including backlighting], power and communications.

But Scheidt’s MBA gave him the new knowledge he needs to help the company bring its products to market, he said.

“After some soul searching during my first year, I realized that the real reason I came to get my MBA was because I wanted to make some change to the consumer electronics industry. I decided that before I ever heard of Cree or of this internship. Once I got in, I realized what kind of opportunity I had with Cree - to get in on the first floor on this technology that will change the consumer electronics industry,” he said.

“More than anything else, I am motivated by wanting to bring this technology to the market and have it be a success. Everyone else working there feels the same way. It is a very positive, very active environment and I just didn't want to leave it (or the job!) when I went back to school. I knew I would miss too much in the nine months until I could start
full-time.”

So, he found a way to stay on board on a part-time basis.

“I started in June 2005 as a marketing intern, working full-time during the summer. Once school started in August, I continued working about 20 hours per week. In November, at my request, my responsibilities started growing and haven't stopped since.”

His official title, when he starts full-time after graduation, this spring is product marketing for Cree’s LCD backlighting department

Scheidt cites the Management of Technology and Innovation course, taught by Tony O'Driscoll (MBA, “0x and now researcher with IBM) as being “probably the most helpful” in preparing for his work at Cree.

“My job was looking at launching a new product, so naturally the course was very applicable. He did a great job of teaching how to make inferences on markets and new technologies, as well as bringing a very practical approach to marketing,” Scheidt said.

He also found the MBA course on creativity in business to be a nice complement to the product development class. “At the core of both classes is the creativity process; however, each comes at it from a completely different angle, and there was true synergy between  the two classes.”

Speaking about the creativity class, he said, “It was such a breath of fresh air to talk about business with people who were not MBAs,” he said. “It was not the type of class where I can say ‘Now I know how to do X’ or ‘Instead of doing X, I will do Y.’ I think of it more like a philosophy class. It changed the way I look at things and how I think about things.”