November 21, 2014
A creative imagination is the future
Dear reader
One million dollars. That’s how much prize money Fastree 3D could win. The EPFL spin-off is one of the finalists of the Powerful Answers Award from US group Verizon. Fastree 3D develops 3D cameras with which cars in the future could automatically avoid collisions with other vehicles. A visionary project in a very literal sense.
Fastree 3D is not the only Swiss start-up company with a pioneering project that was awarded this week. In Freiburg, presentation of the cantonal Innovation prizes took place before 500 visitors. The winner in the ‘Startup’ category was Bcomp, a young company that processes renewable raw materials into a high-tech material, which is used even in space.
An award was also made to crowdinvest.ch for ‘Banking Innovation of the Year’. The platform uses the opinions of a large number of investors to make investment decisions. So far, the performance has been better than that of most managed funds.
Start-ups find new, surprising ways even when dealing with social problems – for example, the suicide of young people. Although 9,000 young people every year in Switzerland make a suicide attempt, it is still a taboo topic. To change this, start-up taboobreaker has developed playful programmes aimed at young people. Founder Karin Stierlin received the Women’s Business Motivation prize.
Both AEON Scientific and NeuroGyn offer radically new techniques, and the two start-ups were among the winners of the Swiss Technology Award at the Swiss Innovation Forum in Basel on Thursday.
The Innovation Forum featured interesting workshops, networking and several high-profile presentations. The day started with a keynote speech by Federal Councillor Johann Schneider-Ammann, who spoke not only about the most important general characteristics of innovation policy, but also mentioned specific measures. The theme of the day, however, came from David Bosshart, director of the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute. He stressed that imagination today is the bottleneck in innovation and that creatively imaginative people are the future. Good news for the visionary Swiss founder.
Investors seeking such founders have the opportunity to get to know several at the forthcoming Swiss Venture Day on 3 December. In addition an interesting Business Angel Day will be held in Karlsruhe on 10 December. And the awards go on: presentation of the Startcup Ticino Awards takes place in Lugano on 4 December.
Have an imaginative weekend.
Stefan Kyora
Managing Editor, startupticker.ch