Overview
Vancouver Island University has partnered with Mitacs to offer the Business Strategy Internship (BSI). The award provides either $10,000 or $15,000 per intern to allow them to undertake a four-month internship project with a partner organization in Canada. Interns will work to co-design a project with their partner organization to work on the organization’s innovation activities, helping them improve their products, processes, or services.
Innovation projects are expected to lead to change and improvements for the partner and/or community, through exploration, design, and implementation of improvements/efficiencies in business models, products, processes, or service delivery.
The BSI program aims to:
- Support innovation to generate knowledge and its transfer between academic and non-academic sectors
- Strengthen the innovation capabilities of partner organizations
- Dupport the creation and ownership of intellectual property in Canada
- Promote collaboration between sectors by reducing the risk for companies to engage in innovation
- Provide work-integrated learning and professional skills training to increase employability of post-secondary students
- Ensure and promote equitable access by underrepresented groups to foster inclusive innovation
Details
- The BSI program offers four funding models for each 4-month internship:
- $10k option: $2,500 from the partner + $7,500 from Mitacs (full award paid to the intern)
- $15k option: $3,750 from the partner + $11,250 from Mitacs (intern receives $10k min, remainder available for research expenses)
- $20k option: $5,000 from the partner + $15,000 from Mitacs (intern receives $15k min, remainder available for research expenses)
- Partner organization (company or NFP) must have less than 500 employees to qualify.
- Projects must be designed as four-month internships for VIU MBA interns.
- Projects will be designed to address one or more business innovation components (i.e., marketing, operations, finance, intellectual property (IP), etc.) dependent on the needs of the organization.
- Projects submitted to Mitacs will be adjudicated to ensure that the participants meet the necessary requirements and that the work outlined is eligible for the program.
- Each project will require supervision from a supervisor at the partner organization and an academic supervisor or a point of contact appointed by the institution to oversee the work and the intern.
- Interns are expected to meet weekly with both supervisors to report on the progress of their project. Virtual meetings are acceptable.
- Interns and both supervisors will be required to complete an exit survey at the end of the program reporting on project outcomes, skills developed and providing feedback on the program experience.
- Interns will deliver a final presentation to their supervisors summarizing the work at project completion.
