Co-create with other stakeholders. Develop radical ideas in an open and collaborative dialogue that can then be tested in practice.
In a rapidly changing world, it is becoming increasingly urgent to accelerate innovation and find new ways to solve problems in collaboration. Globalisation, digitalisation and the climate crisis are three examples attesting to this. The Innovation Booster programme cultivates open and collaborative responses to meet such challenges.
Against this backdrop, the worlds of business and research, as well as politics and end-users, are called upon to develop radical ideas through co-creation in open innovation. Find out more about the mission of the Innovation Boosters:
Innovation Boosters are operative in areas as diverse as the environment, digitalisation, health and social innovation. You can actively participate in the initiative that applies to your specific situation and challenges.
Innovation Boosters are active in a wide range of themes. As a researcher, entrepreneur, player in the economy, in politics or simply an end user, you can participate in the activities of all initiatives that interest and are relevant to you.
The aim is to identify and explore problems within interdisciplinary teams in order to develop novel solutions together. Participating allows you to:
Meet new partners
Explore problems with user-centric methods
Learn how to develop more radical innovation ideas
Obtain funding and support to test your idea
Learn from the outcomes in order to reshape your idea if necessary
Within a specific theme, you co-create in collaboration with several other stakeholders around a challenge. Together, you develop ideas that are intended to lead to radical solutions and can thereupon be tested.
In the challenge stage, you work with participants from research, business, politics and society. Working together and using agile and user-centric methods, you analyse a problematic in depth. You then try to find ideas to develop radical solutions. The most promising ideas are selected and up to CHF 25,000 can be granted to test them during the idea stage. To be selected, the innovation teams carrying out the tests must consist of at least one research partner and one implementation partner.
In the idea stage, you are asked to test the desirability, viability and feasibility of the chosen solution ideas. In an iterative and user-centric approach, you collaborate as a team with the aim of getting rapid feedback to learn from successes and failures and, in so doing, determine the next steps in your project.
Projects developed beyond the Innovation Boosters can be supported in various ways by Innosuisse. There are several options available for further support.
Submit an application for a new Innovation Booster
Every two years on average, a call for proposals is opened to launch new thematic initiatives aimed at facilitating radical innovation in Switzerland.
There is no call at the present time. Subscribe to our newsletter to stay up to date with our latest news.
As manager of an Innovation Booster, you will lead a thematic initiative and orchestrate activities to facilitate knowledge transfer and collaboration. The aim is to actively help participants to capture and understand problems, and to encourage them to work together to generate innovative and radical solutions to resolve them.
Each Innovation Booster, or thematic initiative, focuses on a specific innovation theme. An initiative is active for a period of four years. The Innovation Booster currently in operation cover fields ranging from artificial intelligence to lifestyle, including tourism and foodtech.
To apply to run an Innovation Booster, you need to form an alliance of key players from research, business, politics and society around a thematic initiative. Within this alliance, you appoint a leading house that will manage the initiative. It must have its own legal personality and be based in Switzerland.
As an alliance, you must be prepared to work together to promote the development of radical innovations. You need to follow the principles of open innovation, encouraging the early involvement of potential users in the development and testing of solution ideas. Your innovation topic must have a potential for radical innovation and create added value for the Swiss economy and/or society.
The success of an Innovation Booster depends on the ability and competences of the alliance to organise and manage the process of co-creating and testing ideas.
