Innovation Business Development Intern

About the Role

MANN+HUMMEL’s Innovation team is exploring new growth opportunities in MedTech and Pharma, building on the company’s strengths in filtration, separation, membranes, and contamination control. As a Business Development (New Ventures) intern, you will work with Innovation Project Managers and cross-functional teams to understand unfamiliar markets, test commercial hypotheses, and determine where new businesses could be created. This is an analytical, market-facing role focused on commercial opportunity evaluation, venture strategy, and new business creation.

Key Responsibilities

Opportunity Identification & Market Assessment

• Investigate emerging markets, unmet customer needs, industry trends, and applications for filtration and separation technologies.
• Evaluate market attractiveness through segmentation, top-down and bottom-up market sizing, competitive analysis, and assessment of growth drivers and barriers.
• Identify relevant technologies, startups, strategic partners, and external capabilities that could enable new business opportunities.

Customer Discovery & Commercial Validation

• Help develop and test hypotheses about customer problems, value propositions, commercial demand, and product-market fit.
• Plan, conduct, and synthesize interviews with potential customers, industry experts, and other stakeholders, with guidance from the project team.
• Assess customer economics, purchasing decisions, willingness to pay, competing solutions, and critical barriers to adoption.

New Venture Strategy & Business-Case Development

• Evaluate business models, revenue opportunities, pricing approaches, unit economics, and potential go-to-market strategies.
• Build evidence-based commercial and financial assessments, using scenarios and sensitivities to make assumptions and uncertainty explicit.
• Explore potential commercialization paths, including internal development, partnerships, investments, or acquisitions, as appropriate.
• Take ownership of a defined opportunity assessment or project workstream and present findings, key risks, and recommended next steps to the team.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications

• Currently enrolled in a Master of Business Administration (MBA) program.
• Relevant professional experience involving market research, strategy, commercial assessment, business-case development, or comparable analytical work.
• Strong structured problem-solving skills and the ability to turn ambiguous business questions into practical analyses and recommendations.
• Ability to evaluate markets, competitive dynamics, customer needs, business models, and commercialization options.
• Sound quantitative skills, including market sizing, financial modeling, and scenario analysis; proficiency in Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint.
• Strong research, critical-thinking, and communication skills, including confidence engaging with industry experts and synthesizing complex information.
• Initiative, adaptability, and intellectual curiosity, with the ability to learn unfamiliar technologies and work independently with appropriate guidance.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in management or strategy consulting, commercial due diligence, corporate strategy, product strategy, or new business development.
• Exposure to MedTech, pharmaceuticals, life sciences, industrial technologies, or technology commercialization.
• Experience with customer discovery, primary research, startup evaluation, venture building, or new market entry projects.

What You Can Expect

Hands-on exposure to how new business opportunities are explored inside a global technology company, with the chance to work across commercial and technical teams, contribute original thinking, and influence recommendations on which opportunities should move forward.