Internship is a spectrum. At one end, you make the coffee, do some admin and get to write on your CV that you worked near people doing the job you’re interested in. At the other end, you do work you’re interested in, build your abilities, and maybe find a career you want to pursue long-term. At Innovia Technology, we offer the second kind.
Our 2024 intern team have been here for two months. They are already working on optimising medical equipment, expanding the manufacturing capabilities of a food company, using behavioural science to inform product marketing, and prototyping new food formulations. That’s just a snippet of their work so far, and they still have a month to go.
They also seem to be getting a sense of who we are, how we work and the value we deliver for clients. Read on for a description of the experience in their own words.
As a company, we find that we get as much benefit from our intern programmes as we give to individuals. For our work in breakthrough innovation, interns provide a valuable fresh perspective. They increase our diversity – as well as their varied discipline backgrounds, they bring insight from different cultures and age groups, adding another dimension to our holistic approach to complex problem solving. This isn’t just temporary: after their summer internships are over, we have welcomed many back as permanent staff. For one former intern, this has led to a career at Innovia that has led all the way to a role on the board!
Interns on interning at Innovia Technology
Innovia welcomes four interns in 2024 - Isabella Burn (life sciences), Hannah Cox (material sciences), Ahmed Ibrahim (medicine) and Karlijn Vanoppen (behavioural science). We asked them how their intern experience compares to others, what surprised them about work here, and how they would describe the famously indescribable Innovia lunches.
How does it compare to other internships?
Isabella commented “From day one, I have been put on projects and worked alongside various teams. From day two, I was able to sit in on a client call for a global company and after four weeks I’d participated in four different projects - each very different from the others. Everyone at Innovia has made me feel like a proper member of the team and not just a summer intern! The breadth of projects I’ve been exposed to has allowed me to gain an understanding into many different sectors and industries and also, into how consulting can work to help a variety of companies.”
For Ahmed, with experience at a venture capital fund and an investment bank, as well as in medical training: “Innovia has been quite a different experience. What stands out for me is the open culture and flat organisational structure at Innovia. This makes it a lot less intimidating when asking more senior people for help, or when sharing thoughts.”
What is surprising about your internship at Innovia Technology?
Hannah said: “Compared to previous internships, I was most surprised by the success with which Innovia balances an in-depth induction with getting started on work fast. Though perhaps more importantly, this has been by far the most open place I’ve worked in – everyone was incredibly welcoming, with questions always encouraged, and even more so they seem to genuinely love working here. The opportunity to get fully involved in project work makes you see why right from the start: while the challenges tackled are hard, it just makes solving them even more rewarding.”Isabella was surprised by how the teams are organised: “Everyone purposefully has a different background: I’m on a project which is composed of a chemist, engineer, material scientist and a life scientist. I had not expected to be working so closely with professionals from different disciplines outside my own, but it has meant I always have a unique perspective to bring to the team. Working in this way allows us to think holistically and come up with original innovative ideas.”
For Ahmed, it’s the impact of the work: “I’m surprised every time I see client products out in the wild, whether that be thinking back to my surgical placements, or walking through a supermarket. Each time I’m reminded of how Innovia works with the best and biggest companies across all sectors.”
How do you find the Innovia lunch experience?
Hannah says: “Something that really sums up Innovia is the lunches. At 12 o’clock sharp every day, mass migration to the canteen begins, weaving through the food options, only stopping in indecision after realising there’s far more choices than you could try in one mealtime. The menu’s variety is only surpassed by the diversity of conversation…”
Karlijn adds, “Lunchtime is not only for eating. It is a place to get to know each other on a level outside of work - the conversations are truly a reflection on the culture and values that everyone at Innovia deeply cares about. One conversation that stuck with me was an Innovian struggling with using their brand-new reusable toothpaste holder, which was creating more instead of less waste. In a matter of minutes, the whole table was engaged in finding solutions. It showed me how everyone working at Innovia is always up for a challenge!”
Ahmed feels he always "comes out of lunch having learnt something new. Most of which is useful knowledge, some of which not so much...”
What’s your favourite/best thing about your work so far?
All of our interns called out ideation and brainstorming as a highlight – where teams with a variety of backgrounds and perspectives get into a room, often with stimuli for the project to aid creativity (for example, foods related to the challenge we are thinking about), and generate “a tonne of ideas on sticky notes”, integrating different perspectives. “By the end of the session,” says Isabella, “you always come out with new questions and ideas and a new perspective on the problem.”
Hannah also mentioned that it was “exciting to see and take part in the evolution of ideas from a post-it note to detailed, practicable solutions enabling front-end innovation”. While for Ahmed, it’s the outcome: “Working on difficult problems that no one has thought about before that have direct and meaningful impacts on the world.”
Our interns had a lot more to say, and we couldn’t fit it all in here! If you’re interested in working here yourself, our current vacancies are listed here… We must, however, warn you that working here tends to increase biscuit intake (by 1.5 biscuits/day, n=4), as well as lunch pontification.
If Innovia Technology’s holistic, breakthrough approach interests you, why not visit our website to hear how we used soft matter physics to help PepsiCo, owners of Walker’s Crisps, make non-potato based snacks that are just as beloved? If that’s not to your taste, we also worked with Heineken to develop an anti-drink driving campaign, made record breaking swimsuits for Arena, and much more.
Author: Kate Oliver
