Hej! Reporting from Copenhagen here. My first year of HBS is complete, and I moved here one month ago for my summer internship. I’m working in New Product Development at Radiometer – a medical device subsidiary of Danaher. I came to HBS from consulting and was hoping to do something completely new for my summer internship while pursuing my interest in healthcare. Ideally, I wanted to work on a team helping build a product, and do so in a new location. My internship has so far proven to be a great fit. I’m working with the Commercial, Research & Development (R&D), and Finance teams assessing the opportunity for a new medical diagnostic tool that targets a previously unaddressed customer segment. My job involves reaching out to our different country teams across the globe to evaluate the opportunity in their market, gathering input to inform the R&D team on product features, and eventually drafting up the business case (where I get to apply my net present value and weighted average cost of capital skills from first-year finance classes!). I’ve enjoyed the exposure to the Danaher lean processes and kaizen-based systems that I had previously heard about. It has been implemented by Radiometer since its acquisition by Danaher in 2004 and I’ve seen how much it infiltrates every aspect of how they do work. (There is an HBS case about it!)

Overall, the job has gotten off to a great start and I can’t complain about the sustainable working hours. It also interested me to notice that there are no take-away boxes in our cafeteria – everyone is forced to take time to enjoy lunch and the company of their colleagues. (Go Denmark!)

On a separate note, the most challenging part of my day is my 40-minute bike ride to work alongside every other Copenhagen resident. I never thought I’d be getting to work early to avoid bike rush-hour traffic. My Danish is coming along very slowly but I think I’ve finally mastered how to say “I don’t understand Danish” with some confidence. Not a big problem though, because everyone here is perfectly fluent in English. It’s been wonderful getting to know the area, new people, and embarking on a culinary tour of this foodie city.

Having some distance from our first-year at HBS, I have a renewed appreciation for how incredible and out-of-the ordinary it was to be in school at HBS – every day, getting to sit in class and discuss a variety of issues with people from every corner of the world. I’m still getting used to the adjustment back to a more routine working life. I look forward to seeing what the rest of the summer brings before seeing all my friends back in Boston and kicking off our second-year this fall!