Kickstart innovation program focuses on sustainability and circular economy

Renowned companies invest in the future with a focus on the circular economy: each year, Kickstart arranges opportunities for 100 companies to collaborate with key players on feasibility studies, pilot and commercial projects, and further innovation partnerships. The application phase for startups began on April 4.

The Kickstart team. Startups have been able to apply for the innovation program again since April 4. (Photo: Zamir Loshi)

Kickstart is one of the largest zero-equity open innovation platforms in Europe. Its mission is to build purposeful innovation ecosystems by accelerating innovation. The platform brings together public and private organizations, startups, investors and experts with the common goal of developing next-generation products and services and achieving significant impact at scale.

Already more than 400 startups supported

"We have been a global partner of Kickstart since its founding in 2016. Together with our in-house experts*, Kickstart defines relevant topics and looks for promising startups. This allows us to promote open innovation, connect with startups and enable new trends in the market, and contribute to the deep tech nation and sustainability-oriented solutions," explains Roger Wüthrich-Hasenböhler, Chief Strategy, and Growth Officer at Swisscom. Also participating in the Kickstart program, now in its 8th year, with the aim of developing sustainable and innovative solutions for society, are well-known companies such as  AXA, the Kanton Vaud, the city of Zurich, Coop, Swisscom, the furniture, PostFinance, Sanitas,  CSEM and MSD. In recent years, Kickstart has been able to attract some of the world's best startups, including such well-known ones as Planted, Neustark, Unsupervised and AAAcell. Since 2016, Kickstart has supported more than 400 startups and realized over 270 deals in the form of collaborations from over 80 countries. In the process, investments of more than CHF 2 billion have been raised.

Innovation program gains in importance

"The program continues to grow in importance, not only in terms of innovation, but also in terms of sustainability and circular economy," explains Katka Letzing, Co-Founder and CEO of Kickstart Innovation, one of the largest open innovation platforms in Europe. "The challenges for companies and organizations are becoming more complex and competitive pressures are increasing. By working from developed proof-of-concepts rather than isolated solutions, both sides have the opportunity to make much faster progress in their respective fields." The goal of the Kickstart program is to enable pilot projects or commercial collaborations between startups and established institutions. This is to bring new products and services to market on a larger scale, develop new revenue streams and invest in breakthrough models and processes. Last year, more than 50 collaborations were announced to work together on innovative solutions for Switzerland and beyond. Ideas were diverse, ranging from a software platform for decarbonizing supply chains, to sustainable insulation packaging made from recycled waste paper, to solar thermal and photovoltaic collectors that achieve some of the highest energy densities in the world.

Five areas

The search for the topics of the future is taking place in five areas: New Work & Learning, Health & Wellbeing, Finance & Insurance, Food & Retail and Smart Cities. Each area focuses on specific innovation trends and the needs of individual partners with increasing importance in the topics of technology, sustainability and investment.

Source and further information: Kickstart

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