For the eleventh time, the Standortförderung Region Winterthur, with the support of Landbote, Tele Top and Zürcher Kantonalbank, has honored those companies that created the highest number of jobs in the previous year. This is a sign of recognition and also motivation for companies in Winterthur to do the same.

Each year, this made it possible to elicit not only those employers who

a) in absolute, and

b) stood out in terms of relative growth,

but also those companies that trained a particularly large number of apprentices.

In the past two years, another success story has been written in Winterthur: The SME Forum Region Winterthur, which takes place at the end of each year at the "Winti Mäss" in the Eulachhallen, enjoys great popularity among participants from business, politics and society - an ideal setting for the award of outstanding job creators, the partner organizations found. The award, and with it the prize winners, will receive an even larger and more important platform.

SME Forum Winterthur Region

The evaluation period is new for the participants: This no longer ends on January 1, but on June 30, 2016. Once again, the job creators can win prize money of 1000 Swiss francs per winner. In addition, a company video clip and other media appearances will be realized. From the point of view of the partner organizations, the platform launched by the event organizer Maurer + Salzmann AG is the ideal setting for the award ceremony.

The next "Stellenschafferpreis" will take place on Friday, December 2, 2016 as part of the third SME Forum Region Winterthur.

https://www.standort-winterthur.ch

Minergie has been given a new management team - and it is throwing itself into the work: the Minergie, Minergie-P and Minergie-A standards are being completely revised under the new managing director Anderas Meyer Primavesi.

The adjustments are based on a broad survey conducted in the fall of 2015 and will incorporate the rapid technical and legislative developments of recent years. Adjustments and additions to the building standards are currently being openly discussed in the construction and energy sectors as part of a series of expert panels. The federal government and the cantons are also closely involved in the process.

Among other things, the focus is on solutions for an optimal coordination of electricity consumption and photovoltaic production. The advantages and disadvantages of incorporating novel technologies such as battery storage will also be thoroughly discussed and analyzed.

The innovations will be presented to the public for the first time at the General Meeting on June 16, 2016 in Fribourg. The launch will take place on January 1, 2017.

Waste is raw material - this is the guiding principle of waste and resource management in the Canton of Zurich. As a pioneer in so-called "urban mining," the Canton of Zurich consistently focuses on recovering valuable materials from the legacies of our society, thus making the Canton of Zurich a productive resource mine.

Closing a broken circuit again
One precious raw material that still ends up in waste today is phosphorus - an indispensable and irreplaceable substance for food production. Since 2006, sewage sludge from wastewater treatment plants may no longer be spread on fields as fertilizer because it contains too many pollutants. As a result, the phosphorus contained in the sewage sludge can no longer be returned to the natural material cycle. The canton of Zurich has therefore completely reorganized its sewage sludge disposal within a few years. With the commissioning of the new, central sewage sludge recycling plant in Zurich, practically 100 percent of the phosphorus present in the sewage sludge is available for recovery and the sewage sludge disposal costs in the Canton of Zurich have been reduced by more than half. In addition, the canton of Zurich has set itself the goal of developing a process that extracts the phosphorus from the sewage sludge ash in an environmentally friendly manner so that it is available in pure form as a raw material and commodity for industrial processes, such as the production of plant fertilizers. In this way, the natural phosphorus cycle will be closed again and Switzerland will become independent of phosphorus imports in the long term.

Successful in the laboratory
Now the Canton of Zurich has taken a decisive step closer to this goal. Together with the renowned technology partner Técnicas Reunidas SA (Spain), the Center for Sustainable Waste and Resource Utilization (ZAR) Foundation in Hinwil and Zuchwil, which was co-founded by the canton of Zurich, succeeded for the first time in October 2015 in producing high-quality phosphoric acid from Zurich sewage sludge ash in the laboratory. This success is an important milestone on the way to recovering phosphorus from sewage sludge on an industrial scale.

Canton Zurich supports further development
The ZAR Foundation, together with Técnicas Reunidas SA, will now test the technical feasibility of the process in a pilot plant. The canton of Zurich is supporting this phase of development in the form of start-up financing with a contribution of 2 million Swiss francs or 60 percent of the costs, as the government council has now decided. The remaining 40 percent or 1.3 million Swiss francs will be borne by the technology partner Técnicas Reunidas SA. The upcoming clarifications will show what costs would be incurred by a commercial user. In return, the canton of Zurich will receive free access to the findings of further development work and will be entitled to a free license should the process be patented.
Government Council Decision No. 58/2016 .

The team analyzed data from around the world and reviewed 196 scientific publications on milk and 67 on meat. It found significant differences between organic and conventional milk as well as between organic and conventional meat. The difference was particularly striking in the area of fatty acid composition and the proportion of essential minerals and antioxidants.

The two studies showed, among other things:

• Both organic milk and organic meat contain about 50 % more health-promoting omega-3 fatty acids than conventional products.
• Organic milk contains 40 % more conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) with health-promoting properties.
• Organic milk contains slightly higher levels of iron, vitamin E and some carotenoids
• In conventional milk, the content of iodine, an essential trace element, is increased by 74 % on average.

The findings were published in the British Journal of Nutrition on February 16, 2016. According to the team of experts, the data show that by switching to organic milk and meat, people consume more fatty acids, which are important in the diet.

The differences are mainly due to the different feeding of organically and conventionally raised animals. For ruminants (cattle, sheep, goats), the organic standards severely limit the amount of concentrated feed (grain maize, cereals, soy). For poultry and pigs, the organic standards require outdoor exercise, so these animals also generally eat more grass and herbs.

The two studies complement a 2014 publication in which an international team investigated the composition of organically and conventionally grown crops. This study, also published in the British Journal of Nutrition, showed that organically grown crops contain 60 % more important antioxidants than conventional crops.

(FiBL)

The Bisnode/IFJ Start-up Index tracks the new entries of companies in the commercial register per quarter.

Swiss start-ups in Q4 2015 were slightly below the level of the two previous years. - This is the result of the current evaluation of the Bisnode/IFJ Start-up Index. A total of 10,708 new companies were entered in the commercial register from October to December 2015.

In the same quarter of the previous year, there were slightly more registrations, with 10,885 companies. In total, 40,829 companies were founded in 2015, 731 fewer than in 2014. The main reason for the slight decline in new registrations is the Swiss franc shock, which occurred on January 15, 2015, when the exchange rate floor of the Swiss franc against the euro was lifted.

Export-oriented sectors such as the mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and metalworking industries, as well as the hotel and restaurant industry and retail trade, suffered from a marked drop in demand and thus also from more difficult conditions for start-ups.

Considering the difficult situation due to the strong franc, the decline in new registrations has been surprisingly small. Apparently, Switzerland still offers a very good environment for innovative business ideas.

Further interesting details could be found at the IFJ (Institut für Jungunternehmen AG):

http://www.ifj.ch

According to research by executive search and talent management consultancy Korn Ferry, only five DAX chief executives are believed to have previously worked for an unlisted company, i.e. a privately owned company. Of the 30 leading family-owned companies not listed on the stock exchange, only seven CEOs have reportedly had a group as an employer before.

Contemporary models?

Especially in times of new, disruptive business models, it should be an advantage to have lived and worked in both worlds, or rather systems - underlines the study by Korn Ferry. Hubertus Graf Douglas, Managing Director of Korn Ferry in Germany, says:

"Managers usually unconsciously determine the type of company in which they will pursue a career. Often, this is already decided with the first professional station." The CEO goes on to note: "Politics, business, science and the media are considered to have very little permeability between them. A similar effect also exists between the worlds of 'corporation' and family business."

Yet today's top managers would have had comparatively similar training at the start of their careers. Surprisingly, only six of the DAX CEOs have actually completed vocational training. According to the Korn Ferry experts, there is also public evidence of a similar training situation among board members/managing directors at companies that are mostly privately owned.

More than a third of them studied business administration, followed by engineering, law and occasionally natural sciences. Matthias Müller at Volkswagen is the head of a DAX company with a degree in computer science. One difference in the Western business world is particularly striking: While more than one-fifth of the group CEOs are engineers, only just under ten percent of the CEOs or board members of the major family businesses are engineers.

Tradition and stable smell

While no DAX CEO today has not studied, these cases do still exist in family businesses. The fact is: "Without an academic degree, you don't stand a chance at the top management level these days," says Douglas. "The decision for a system is usually made at the first professional station.

Conclusion: While in one world it is primarily a matter of satisfying a large number of investors and social stakeholders, in the other world everything often revolves around one thing: the satisfaction of the owners and shareholders. This has a clear impact on management models and corporate culture.

Douglas: "Those who want to find their way up the ladder understandably therefore align their behavior and decisions very early on with the different requirements of each culture."

Graf Douglas says: "In order to get into top management, consistency paid off above all, in the past as it does today. A good reputation is and remains an important bonus for the choice of a new boss. External appointments have an increasingly difficult time, as prominent cases show. And moving to a company always brings with it the risk of not getting along with the culture. Executives fail not because of a lack of expertise, but because they can't find their way into the new culture.

This is also the real reason why there is hardly any career mix between corporate groups and family businesses among top managers. (Source: Korn Ferry)

Areas of the economic world have also been easier to coordinate in the past. At least this is what the study published in time for the World Economic Forum in Davos (WEF) suggests. At the same time, the leading economic drivers declare serious changes in the market structure, a turning away from globalization to a so-called multi-polar world. In fact, entire economic sectors are breaking away from increasingly integrating economies and political unions as regional economic blocs, different legal systems, values and notions of freedom are renegotiated.

Globalization is "not dead," PwC concludes, but uncertainties and risks among business leaders have increased, allowing those extreme multi-polar developments and conservative mentalities to emerge.

Root Cause Management

From a political point of view, the study actually reveals nothing surprising. However, it becomes interesting when study results are included in individual observations. The new study underscores that managers do seem to recognize the increased uncertainties and dangers - but the central causes of current developments are not so easily managed. Some leading managers would even focus their businesses on typical problems, problems they have now been focusing on for many years.

But are there other responses to economic instability? In any case, PwC presents an interesting overview that maps the influence of the economy on politics. Using detailed statistics and charts, the study not least ensures that they managers do not get around two important parameters: Growth and stability.

The actual key results can be found at www.pwc.com/ceosurvey

Prof. Weinmann explains which feelings are traced during a corresponding mouse movement: "A relaxed computer user moves the mouse quickly in straight lines or slightly curved curves. The more frustrated or negative he is, the slower, but also more angular and longer the mouse movements turn out."

The researchers found this out through repeated experiments with different comparison groups. For example, in one of the experiments, some of the test subjects were frustrated in advance by unsolvable tasks in order to then complete the actual test, in which the mouse movements were measured. These were then compared with the movements of the group of participants who were able to solve the test without prior annoyance. Markus Weinmann explains, "We could tell with 82 percent certainty from the mouse movements whether the test subjects were experiencing negative emotions."
Who benefits from this knowledge

Knowing the mood of the Internet user is particularly useful for operators of online shopping platforms, because a dissatisfied visitor is unlikely to come back to make a purchase. By installing a plug-in on their website, website operators can quickly identify visitors in a negative mood based on their mouse movements and take countermeasures - whether by forwarding them to customer service or sending an automatically generated apology. Finally, decoding the mood of website visitors is also likely to be of great value to insurance providers, says Markus Weinmann: "It can be used to sound out suspicious cases of possible insurance fraud, which can then be checked in a targeted manner."

www.uni.li

After the departure of his predecessor as CEO of Abraxas Informatik AG three years ago, CFO Félix Mauron additionally took over his office at the express request of the Board of Directors. Following the successful stabilization of the company, he has now asked the Board of Directors to release him early from the double burden. The Board of Directors has now complied with this request. "The Board of Directors is pleased that Félix Mauron will remain with Abraxas and continue in the position of CFO," says Chairman Paul Glutz on the occasion of the decision.

The position of CEO will be taken over by Reto Gutmann as of May 1, 2016, who joins Abraxas from the management of ETH Informatik. Reto Gutmann has been a member and Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors of Abraxas since September 2013 and has played a key role in the development of the current corporate strategy. As former CEO of Siemens IT Solutions and Services AG, he knows the Swiss IT market from many years of experience. He will relinquish his mandate as a member of the Abraxas Board of Directors on the occasion of the change.

After years of negotiations, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has set emission limits for aircraft for the first time. The new emissions standard is to apply to new aircraft types as early as 2020, while new machines of existing aircraft types will have until 2023 to meet the limits. The organization also recommends that the production of aircraft types that cannot meet the limit value be discontinued by 2028.

However, the new caps do not apply to aircraft already in service - a fact criticized by environmental protection organizations. Opinions also differ on how much emissions can ultimately be saved.

The limits are part of a global initiative by ICAO to achieve carbon-neutral growth in international aviation by 2020 and an annual improvement in fuel efficiency of 2% by 2050. Switzerland has developed an action plan for this as part of its Sustainable Development Strategy.

France is declaring war on food waste: Supermarkets of 400 square meters or more will no longer be allowed to throw away food they can no longer sell. Instead, according to a new law, it must either be sold at a reduced price, donated or reused - for example, as animal feed. Composting or fermentation into biogas is also permitted.

The goal of the regulation is to cut the amount of waste in half by 2025.

Food waste has also been an issue in Switzerland for some time: according to a Report by WWF Switzerland and foodwaste.ch However, the major losses do not occur in the retail or wholesale trade, but mainly in industrial processing, where "inferior" goods are sorted out, and at the end consumers. Around one third of food is lost in this way.

WWF Switzerland therefore recommends that all players take action: In particular, consumers should plan quantities more consciously and check the edibility of expired products before throwing them away; retailers should review their supply chains and consciously reduce their offerings at closing time; the processing industry should use low-loss production facilities and cooperate with food aid organizations; and farms should seek channels for second-class products.

Actually, International SOS has been publishing a "Health Risk Map" since 2010. The focus was on the health risks in the various countries. Now, for the first time, the assessment of the travel safety risk of the individual countries is also included in the map. For 2016, the map will therefore be renamed the "Travel Risk Map," the first integrated map for health and travel safety risks.

Differences

Serious differences within individual countries illustrate how difficult it is for companies to adequately prepare their employees for international travel. Companies are encouraged to consider both medical and safety issues when preparing employees for travel and international projects abroad.

In a recent Ipsos Global Advisor survey on international travel, participants were asked about their travel arrangements. The results show that eight out of ten travelers feel their safety could be at risk while traveling. At the same time, however, only four out of ten respondents inquire before their trip about the crime level at the respective destination, about areas that should be avoided if necessary, about safety standards of public transportation or the booked accommodation.

In addition, the results show that 71 percent of traveling executives have already experienced medical problems during a trip abroad. Only 15 percent, however, said they checked the quality of local healthcare in advance. Dr. Gerard Blanc, Regional Medical Director, International SOS, says:

"Even in countries with low health risk and a modern healthcare system, there are times when travelers need assistance. Language barriers or a health care system with which one is unfamiliar may already prevent adequate care."

Learn more about the "Travel Risk Map 2016" with an interactive search function on http://www.internationalsos.com/travelriskmap