Student Spotlight: Seeing Collaboration Through a New Lens

Gabriel Benbunan (Master of Integrated Innovation for Products & Services ‘26) reflects on how the Integrated Innovation Institute expanded his perspective and led him to an internship with Canon through cross-disciplinary education.

Interdisciplinary education is at the heart of the Integrated Innovation Institute (iii) at Carnegie Mellon University. Students learn about new disciplines that help them to pivot into new roles, but often the education they receive supports their current career paths with an expanded set of skills, thinking, and a broader perspective on industries; Gabriel Benbunan (MIIPS ‘26) joined the iii hoping to strengthen the way he works in brand strategy.

Gabriel studied psychology and minored in business at Loughborough University. His studies were highly focused on consumer behavior and how psychology plays a role in how people respond to commercial scenarios. This eventually led Gabriel to join Saffron Brand Consultants as a brand strategist, where he worked to align company experiences with consumer perceptions. 

Gabriel’s role at Saffron required him to adopt a decisive and design-centric mindset when collaborating with clients. However, when he began interviewing stakeholders at a software company, he realized a gap in his approach. 

“I went into a room with the Chief Product Officer (CPO) and asked her questions to further understand their products and better understand them [the software company]. I remember that conversation very well because the CPO started throwing around a lot of words that I did not understand. I was very taken aback,” Gabriel recalled. 

Serving as a pivotal moment in his professional journey, this interaction, as Gabriel described, lived in his mind “rent-free.”

“If you want to be the best consultant for that company and shape their brand strategy in the best way, you're not going to do it if you don't fully understand the product that serves as the basis of that experience and of that brand,” he reflected.

After that interaction, Gabriel decided that it was time to return to his studies to build his understanding of other industries. He began looking for a graduate program that would provide the technical knowledge he felt he lacked. This deciding factor led him to apply to the Master of Integrated Innovation for Products & Services (MIIPS) at Carnegie Mellon for its interdisciplinary approach, which bridges engineering, design, and business.

In his first two semesters, Gabriel took on challenging coursework by embracing collaboration with his classmates. He found the Integrated Product Development (IPD) Capstone project to be the most memorable part of the MIIPS program for that very reason. 

Bringing together teams with different professional backgrounds, the IPD Capstone connects students with an industry sponsor to design a human-centered solution for a business challenge. Gabriel’s team worked closely with their sponsor, Canon, throughout the spring semester of 2026. According to Gabriel, the project fostered strong connections and a greater understanding of the potential of incorporating every role into conversations. 

“The big lesson for me was how much a product improves when researchers, designers, and engineers are in the same conversation from the start rather than handing work back and forth. Working directly with the people building the thing changes what you propose in the first place. At the end of the day, a solution is not a product. And that gap only gets bridged if that collaboration happens.”

Gabriel’s learning didn’t stop at the end of the semester. 

After a successful project, Canon invited him to continue his capstone work as an intern. Spending the summer at Canon’s United States headquarters, Gabriel had the opportunity to help shape the what and why behind products. Putting his newly acquired technical skills into practice through conversations with developers and engineers, he and his coworkers collaborated to turn ideas into feasible product features. 

Gabriel also had the chance to travel with the Canon team to Irvine, California, to run a workshop with their development team, making him the first intern in the company’s history to travel overnight for work. 

As he begins his final semester at Carnegie Mellon, Gabriel is looking forward to further study at the intersection of product innovation and strategy. Looking back, he feels the MIIPS program has given him a 360-degree view of how products and experiences are developed and designed with intention.

And while he prepares to return to the workplace after graduation, Gabriel emphasizes that he will continue to make cross-disciplinary collaboration a foundational part of his work processes.