2nd Swiss Academic Innovation & Entrepreneurship Forum

At the 1st SAIEF meeting on 14th January 2025 in Biel/Bienne, hosted by the Swiss Center for Design & Health (SCDH), participants from all over Switzerland gathered to exchange on policies and practices to foster innovation and entrepreneurship.

This meeting brought together a broad range of practitioners and stakeholders representing over 60 institutions, including innovation advisors, mentors, program managers and coordinators, technology transfer managers, entrepreneurship lecturers, representatives from student organizations, and Swiss Innovation funding agencies.

The first Forum was a true success with positive feedback from all participants. We had the pleasure of hosting our keynote speaker, Arno Meerman, CEO of the University Industry Innovation Network (UIIN), and our panelists:

• Eva Jaisli, President of the Board of Directors, bpswisstools

• Patrick Kessel, CEO, Perivision

• Christian Brunner, Head, BRIDGE Programme

The forum provided seven workshops on relevant topics that were each visited by 15-40 participants. Here are some key learnings.

Technology Transfer: TTOs and future founders face multiple challenges during the license process. The main cause for these challenges is the lack of transparency of the process, resulting in a mismatch of expectations and a large power-imbalance between TTOs and future founders, as the latter is unaware of the process steps, timelines and expected deliverables before going into the license process. This causes future founders to distrust TTOs from the start as they are not experienced negotiators and are not well educated and prepared.

Entrepreneurship Promotion: Fostering and show-casing entrepreneur role models (at different stages of development and, when possible, still students) and champions which are approachable is important.

Investment: It is important to show early that not every project is a VC case and other financing alternatives exist. Universities should foster access to funding by facilitating collaboration, mapping the funding ecosystem, and attracting investors.

Designing Training Modules: Important for all levels are team formation, testing and establishing an entrepreneurial mindset, as well as acquiring key competences to build an entrepreneurial venture. There is no one-size-fits-all program for all students.

Innovation Triggers: Effective approaches include prioritizing innovation institutionally, fostering inter- and transdisciplinary collaboration, and providing support programs. To further strengthen innovation, universities should emphasize societal impact, create creative learning environments, engage external partners early, and diversify career paths beyond publication metrics.

Student Engagement: Recruiting and keeping student members engaged by investing in culture and social bonding as well as by leading by example.

AI and Higher Education: Challenges faced in leveraging AI include data protection, lack of awareness and transparency, more critical thinking, IP questions, cost of tools (to ensure fairness for all to have access), lengthy bureaucratic processes for approvals, and generational gaps. A shared platform for information exchange, joint workshops, hackathons, etc. is needed.

In conclusion, the 1st SAIEF showed that this new forum was highly desired by the community and filled a void, creating a platform for a more structured exchange and the sharing of best practices in the academic entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystem in Switzerland.