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Swiss EdTech Collider

Hub Information

Hub Name
Swiss EdTech Collider
Local Name
Evolutionary Stage
Fully operational
Geographical Scope
National

Description

The Swiss EdTech Collider is Switzerland’s first collaborative space with a strict focus on EdTech (Education Technology / Education Learning / Digital Learning) and has become a growing, impactful hub and center for ambitious entrepreneurs and startups that aim to change and transform education and learning through new technologies and innovation.

The Swiss EdTech Collider's mission is to help EdTech startups achieve their business objectives - namely supporting organizations such as schools, SME's as well as large corporations in their digital transformation - by enabling them to become part of a unique EdTech ecosystem consisting of EdTech startups, edtech experts, industry leaders, researchers, investors, schools and business partners. Unlike a classical startup incubator or accelerator program, the Swiss EdTech Collider acts as a 'lifelong' partner and offers ongoing support to the startups and hence an ongoing support in the local, digital transformation of organizations.

The membership based, not-for-profit association is located at the EPFL Innovation Park, Lausanne, just a few steps away from Switzerland's EPFL university and EPFL’s LEARN Center for Learning Sciences as well as other learning sciences research hubs. It offers both a modern physical co-working space and a virtual space (membership platform), where like-minded EdTech startups ranging from early-stage to established ventures can meet and share expertise, knowledge, best practices and develop co-operations and synergies in order to develop innovations and tools to support organizations with their digital transformation.

Contact Data

Coordinator (Incubator/accelerator)
Swiss EdTech Collider
https://www.edtech-collider.ch
Year Established
2017
Location
Chemin de la Dent d'Oche 1b, 1024, Ecublens (Switzerland)
Website
https://www.edtech-collider.ch
Social Media
Contact information
Roman Bruegger
contact@edtech-collider.ch

Organisation

Organizational form
(part of) Public organization (part of RTO, or university)
Turnover
250.000-500.000
Number of employees
1-9

Technologies

  • Screens and display technologies
  • Robotics
  • Artificial intelligence
  • Interaction technologies
  • Big data, data analytics, data handling
  • Virtual, augmented and extended reality
  • Simulation, modelling and digital twins
  • Gamification
  • Software as a service and service architectures
  • Internet services
  • New media technologies

The Swiss EdTech Collider is part of the national initiative "digitalswitzerland' (https://digitalswitzerland.com/), a Swiss-wide, multi-stakeholder initiative created from the shared vision of its over 150 members to strengthen Switzerland’s position as a leading innovation hub and also member of the national initiative Swiss Acceleration Network (https://digitalswitzerland.com/swiss-accelerator-network/). Also, the Swiss EdTech Collider is a partner of the regional and national initiative EPFL LEARN Center for Learning Sciences (https://www.epfl.ch/education/educational-initiatives/home/), which's aim is to contribute to the excellence of the Swiss education system and to the digital transformation of our society.  Additionally, the Swiss EdTech Collider co-established the regional initiative of a testlab to digitize and push innovation in education (https://www.rtn.ch/rtn/Actualite/Region/20191029-Le-Carre-bleu-devient-une-vitrine-techno-pedagogique.html).

Furthermore, it is partner of EETN European EdTech Network (https://eetn.eu/), an initiative of the European Commission with the aim to bring together EdTech experts, innovators, higher-education professionals and students, in order to connect the best specialists with the most creative minds from all over the Europe and provide them with the most relevant EdTech content, to foster innovation in the field of higher education on the European market.

Lastly, the Swiss EdTech Collider's strategy alligns with the Smart Specialisation Platforms. First it builds on the historical and current strenghts of the regional area in learning sciences and digital education. Starting with Rousseau's philosophy of education, then building on Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development and constructivism movement, followed by the EPFL's European Leadership in promoting MOOC's (https://www.epfl.ch/education/phd/doctoral-studies-structure/doctoral-courses/edoc-moocs/). Second, the Swiss EdTech Collider relies on the federal co-funding of EPFL combined with regional support of the Vaud region. Third, it links innovation and evidence-based research of the local universities with the regional and national EdTech entrepreneurs and stakeholders to contribute to building a strong EdTech market and environment  in Switzerland. Thanks to this unique EdTech ecosystem, the Swiss EdTech Collider is promoting key enabling technologies in education (such as AR/VR and AI), while tackling the bigger social challenge of digitalisation.

The founders of the Swiss EdTech Collider in their capacity as EPFL professors have significantly contributed - and continue to do so - to the associated key actions in Technology Enhanced Learning, co-leading as example the FP7 STELLAR Network of excellence (https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/47724052.pdf) or the FP7 Go-Lab integrated project for STEM education (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40561-014-0003-6), as aell as its H2020 extensions, i.e. the Next-Lab (https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/731685) and Go-Ga (https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/781012) innovation actions in which the vice-president of the Swiss EdTech Collider is the technical coordinator.

 

 

Market and Services

Sectors

  • Education

TRL Focus

  • TRL3 - Analytical and experimental critical function and/or characteristic proof of concept
  • TRL4 - Component and/or breadboard validation in laboratory environment
  • TRL5 - Component and/or breadboard validation in relevant environment
  • TRL6 - System/subsystem model or prototype demonstration in a relevant environment
  • TRL7 - System prototype demonstration in an operational environment
  • TRL8 - Actual system completed and qualified through test and demonstration

Services provided

  • Awareness creation
  • Ecosystem building, scouting, brokerage, networking
  • Collaborative Research
  • Concept validation and prototyping
  • Testing and validation
  • Incubator/accelerator support
  • Education and skills development

Service Examples

Digitizing the training and development approach for >170k employees of a multinational organization

  • Client profile: Schneider Electric, a world’s leading specialist in energy management and automation, is aiming to digitalize their whole training and development approach of their employees in order to support the on boarding process

  • Client needs: Radical and unprecedented changes and digital transformations directly affect the business of Schneider Electric. The need of the organization is to ensuring transformations are understood and adopted by all 170k employees world-wide. 
  • Provided solution to meet the needs: Coorpacademy, member of the Swiss EdTech Collider, created and implemented their digital experience learning platform to make sure that the highest number of people can be reached in the shortest amount of time with the needed information to help accelerating Schneider Electric's digital transformation.

More details: https://www.coorpacademy.com/en/discover/case-study-corporate-courses/schneider-electric/

Digital transformation in education in public schools

  • Client profile: Public Elementary Schools of the whole Canton of Vaud embracing the digital transformation in education
  • Client needs: Digitalise the approach to teach computational skills and programming to teachers and students in a more digital way
  • Provided solution to meet the needs: In order to support the digital transformation of the learning process for programming and computational thinking skills in all elementary schools in the canton of Vaud, Swiss EdTech Collider’s member Mobsya has been implementing - together with the local authorities - their own developed educational robot Thymio and its teaching and pedagogical programs in locals public schools.

More details: https://sti.epfl.ch/an-epfl-robot-will-soon-be-going-to-school/

Digitize the further education approach in the sports manager training industry

  • Client profile: Digital transformation in the sports industry - implementing innovative learning technologies for the sports manager training (Program “Auf Schalke”)
  • Client needs: The need for a tool that provides easy and 24/7 access to the relevant information, optimizes efficient collaboration and facilitates learning by providing useful and important content
  • Provided solution to meet the needs: Maxbrain, a member of the Swiss EdTech Collider, developed a digitally augmented classroom experience platform, which aims to ‘supercharge' classroom learning for further education and corporate training with 5 powerful features: Learn, Collaborate, Connect, Organise and Deliver. The technology controls the student experience and integrates data from other existing systems seamlessly so that the organization did not have to completely replace their existing systems. This is where MaxBrain bridged the need of the customer and helped them to digitize their educational offering.

More details: https://swissentrepreneursmagazine.com/index.php/2019/07/19/swiss-edtech-startup-company-max-brain-on-the-path-to-success/

Funding

  • Private funding
  • Partner resources
  • Memberships

Customers

Number of customers annually
>50
Type of customers
  • Start-up companies
  • SMEs (<250 employees)
  • MidCaps (between €2-10 billion turnover)
  • Large companies, multi-nationals

    • Partners

    Last updated: 14/04/20 10:05