Research Internships For 2010

A number of research interns have worked with me over the past few years, pursuing specific topics of interest to them and to me. The first was Vijay Nagarajan, whose excellent work on the wireless chip sector led him from being an engineer in Atheros to a product manager at Broadcom. Vijay’s work is now being continued by Nalini Kumar Muppala.

Last summer, Saad Fazil worked on mobile and social apps, a trend that has really caught on. Saad is now at Verizon’s strategy group and also freelance writing for VentureBeat.

Others who have done excellent research are Cindy Weng (social and viral games), Rohit Singh (the water crisis in India), Shipra Agarwal (education sector opportunities in India), Narayanan Raman (CIO priorities), Shailesh Otari (Indian Startups) and Erika Valdez (mompreneurs and food entrepreneurs). Some of them are still working with me.

This year, I have research internships open in the following areas:

1. Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Focus on CIOs and how they see the evolution of cloud computing.
2. Thought Leaders in Sales 2.0: Focus on sales leaders and how they see the evolution of technology-enabled selling.
3. Thought Leaders in Search Marketing: Focus on CMOs and how they see the evolution of online advertising, especially search.
4. Thought Leaders in On Demand Information Security: Focus on CSOs and how they see the information security challenge.
5. Thought Leaders in Personalized e-Commerce: Focus on CIOs and e-commerce leaders of businesses that rely heavily on online selling.
6. Seed Financing for Entrepreneurs: Focus on working capital financing, receivables financing, angel capital, as well as other creative financing instruments and how to use them.
7. The 1M/1M Incubation Radar: Profiling young companies that are in the 1M/1M program.
8. Entrepreneurship Education: What is being taught, where, and how.
9. Incubators: Success parameters, key reasons for failures, and so forth.
10. Speculation tax as a deficit reduction strategy for America
11. Social Media Marketing

As part of the internship, you’d be speaking with leaders in your field of choice, doing online research, as well as potentially some investigative journalism based on instincts and hunches on controversial topics. Then, as you gain my trust and confidence, you will be writing guest columns of your own, giving you an opportunity to showcase a body of work which you can reference for a variety of reasons. I will also be a reference for you and connect you to people in my network as and when needed. I strongly believe that in the future, all professionals who want to become leaders in their fields will need to maintain some form of blogosphere presence, whether that is your own blog or someone else’s blog on which you guest blog. This internship will get you started in that direction. Other than developing expertise, knowledge, experience and a network, these are otherwise unpaid internships.

To Apply:

Please apply directly to my LinkedIn Group for Interns with a completed and updated LinkedIn profile, and a cover letter (which should be in your Request To Join), stating the following:

1. Which of the above areas interests you and why.
2. What do you bring to the table in terms of domain knowledge or demonstrated experience in that area.
3. A commitment to spending at least five hours a week over at least three months on the internship to complete a reasonable body of work. You can continue longer if you like; this is more the minimum that I require. I am interested in getting a flavor of your work ethic, so whatever you can tell me that helps me assess you in that dimension would be helpful.
4. Of course, you need to be an excellent writer, and I need pointers to what you have written before as part of your application.
5. My passion is entrepreneurship and technology. If you share that passion, this will go well. Probably not such a great fit otherwise.
6. I will most certainly have a bias in favor of the readers of my blog, so if you are a reader, indicate what you particularly like and dislike about the blog.
7. In terms of your background, I’d like people with a technology background. A business degree or current academic program affiliation is optional, not necessary. I am very comfortable working with smart engineers who are self-starters, hard-working, and inherently curious. Students, recent graduates, and professionals are  all welcome to apply.

I look forward to working with you.