MIT, in partnership with Highlands and Islands Enterprise, are offering businesses in the Highlands and Islands the opportunity to provide an internship for a small team of savvy students based at the Sloan School of Management during the upcoming spring and fall semesters of 2010.

This promises to be a highly rewarding experience for your business, read on below for more information.

About the E-Lab course
E-Lab is a course offered by MIT’s Sloan School of Management. It offers businesses in Boston, and across the globe the opportunity to work with groups of science, engineering and management students to help top management of high-tech start-ups with an urgent problem they have with running their business.

The E-Lab teams work roughly 1-2 days a week on their assigned company project during the semester. The students gain hands-on experience about starting and running successful businesses and the host companies gain assistance with an urgent aspect of their businesses, for example, choices of initial markets, approaches to gaining new customers, or effectively communicating and marketing the value of the product.

The E-Lab teams, usually comprising of 2 – 4 students typically work with technology-intensive, intellectual property-based companies including, but not limited to, biotech, cleantech, wireless, software and hardware manufacturers.

About the hosting businesses

• The hosting businesses generally have 40 or fewer employees and at least one round of significant venture capital or angel funding.
• Computer software, hardware, and networking; medical devices and biopharmaceutical; nanotechnology; and wireless and telecommunications companies predominate, but we are open to others as well, provided they have serious technology.
• Students need substantial in-person contact with senior managers of the companies, ideally businesses will be:
  
  a) Close enough to Cambridge, MA for students to visit without disrupting additional studies

b) Senior company executives can travel to Cambridge, MA throughout the semester to meet with the students onsite at MIT.

• Most companies are located within Massachusetts' Route 128, California’s Silicon Valley, or Delft (NL), however, we are open to start-ups from other locations, particularly welcoming companies from the Highlands & Islands.

Objective of the internships

• Provide students with a valuable and significant real world experience, making a substantial contribution to a problem which is important to the CEO.
• Introduce students to the needs of the CEO and officers of a high tech start up firm
• Perform useful work and deliver value to the host companies.

Who are the students?

• MIT Sloan MBAs (2nd year students).
• MIT graduate students in Science and Engineering.
• A few Harvard MBAs (2nd year students).