How Innovaud Built Vaud’s Digital Innovation Ecosystem
The innovation ecosystem in the Vaud canton
InnoVaud is the innovation agency of the canton of Vaud, Switzerland. This region is one of the country’s most important centers for research and innovation. It is also one of the richest regions in the world.
How InnoVaud brought the most important innovators in the canton of vaud
Innovaud’s mission is to help innovative startups, scale-ups and SMEs realize their potential by connecting them with the right people and organizations, through funding, coaching, promotion, hosting or networking (Innovaud organizes or co-organizes more than 40 entrepreneurship events per year in Switzerland and abroad). Innovaud prioritizes supporting companies in the fields of life sciences, precision engineering, cleantech, as well as information and communication technology (ICT).
In 2018, Innovaud, together with the authorities for the economy and innovation promotion of the canton of Vaud, organized a study on the readiness of local companies with regard to digitalization, a topic that the politicians of Vaud have put at the heart of their agendas for the coming years. A concrete outcome of this study was that there was a need to regroup and connect the companies and laboratories that develop digital technologies into a single platform. The platform’s members form a community of ambassadors who represent Vaud’s excellence in digital technologies across numerous sectors.
Challenges
How can we make visible and connect the companies and laboratories that develop new digital technologies in the canton of Vaud? How do Vaud’s digital players regroup to facilitate new collaborations between startups, scale-ups, SMEs, large companies and academia?
To go beyond the physical matchmaking through the many events organized every year, Innovaud wanted to add a digital aspect to its services. How to use their knowledge and data about companies to create an engaging and dynamic guide of Vaud’s digital players? How to stimulate and promote Vaud’s innovation ecosystem to Swiss and international stakeholders and investors?
Solution
Using the DataScouts platform, Innovaud created a public and dynamic directory of 400 key digital players in the canton of Vaud, Switzerland. The DataScouts platform helped Innovaud to achieve the project’s objectives. Nevertheless, due to a number of institutions, Innovaud never loses control over the data and information. To keep the company data up to date and to ensure that the ecosystem is complete, Innovaud can count on the collective intelligence of their community. Innovaud is also able to curate the new entities that want to appear on vaud.digital. Therefore, guidelines and accession criteria have been drawn up to complete the service.
Results
After 4 months of intensive work and a fruitful collaboration with DataScouts, Innovaud was able to launch its own ecosystem. The platform has 400 entities (startups, SMEs, large companies and labs) regrouped under a specific taxonomy and branding: 18 digital technologies and 28 different industries are represented. After its launch, it became a living and popular platform used in Switzerland but also abroad to promote Vaud’s expertise in digital. Trends and insights related to the members of the community also support the promotion of what’s buzzing in the dense and ultra-connected ecosystem for entrepreneurs in Vaud.
