Breakout Session: 20 Years of University Startup Funding Programs in Switzerland - Learnings and Design Considerations

Providing funding for researchers intending to translate their research results has shown to be a success factor for several Swiss universities. EPFL has awarded their Innogrants since 2005, in 2019 the University of Zurich introduced the Entrepreneur Fellowship.

What can we learn from the experiences gathered with these programs? What are important design considerations to achieve programs with real impact? We will kick-off this breakout session with two best practices to then visit the key questions together such as how to work complementary to national programs, how to maximize impact across different project phases, what are the non-visible factors that contribute to success and what is the minimal funding volume needed to achieve impact?

Finally, we will look into the potential for inter-university collaborations.

Expected Outcome:

• Understand if and how to setup a startup funding programs at your university. Develop initial ideas for inter-university collaborations.