Zurich, 14 October 2019 – The alliance between Switzerland Global Enterprise (S-GE) and Impact Hub Switzerland brings together the leading expertise base for scaling businesses beyond Switzerland and the world’s largest network for social entrepreneurship. The aim is to give companies the tools to connect with the local innovation ecosystem in the target market, to enable lean entrance, and to give Swiss startups direct access to leading experts who support them in their international expansion.
Changes in what and how Switzerland exports
Despite recent political headwinds in the area of international trade, more and more businesses find themselves competing in global markets. At the same time, digital disruption is radically changing business models. Innovation in hardware, business operations, and algorithms not only become more important as unique selling propositions, they also scale globally much more quickly. Drone technology, artificial intelligence algorithms, and carbon capturing technology are only a few of the new technologies that Switzerland started exporting in the last year. They add to the traditionally strong exports such as financial services, pharmaceutical products, and luxury watches.
Based on these observations, S-GE and Impact Hub have joined forces to develop a leaner approach to scaling in such a complex environment. Companies looking to scale abroad can now explore the possibility of expanding in a lean fashion through the Impact Hub network. S-GE and Impact Hub offer support in the assessment of co working solutions as a first landing pad and facilitate connections into the local entrepreneurship community of the target market.
For Impact Hub Switzerland and S-GE, this is a promising first step towards fulfilling their common vision. The potential for Swiss startups and scale-ups to grow abroad earlier in their journey is huge.
Partnership to strengthen the Swiss export industry
S-GE supports Swiss SMEs on their way into new markets and, thanks to this cooperation, can further expand the range of services for export-oriented companies. “We are delighted to have found another partner in Impact Hub Switzerland to strengthen our support for exporting SMEs,” says Simone Wyss Fedele, CEO of S-GE. “Thanks to the new collaboration, our customers can easily find co working spaces in other countries and benefit from the network and industry know-how of the Impact Hub community.
“Impact Hub is a community of entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, techies, and creatives, where corporates and startups meet to solve problems through open innovation. We are excited to leverage our global network of +100 Hubs to support companies, wherever they want to expand. At the same time the partnership will give the Impact Hub community access to expert knowledge as it prepares to expand worldwide,” says Michael Hunkeler, Open Innovation Lead at Impact Hub Zurich.
About Impact Hub Switzerland
Impact Hub Switzerland is the country’s largest community for social entrepreneurship with more than 2,000 innovators, startups and corporate partners. Impact Hub is creating a thriving innovation ecosystem where people collaborate across organizations, cultures, and generations to solve the grand challenges of our time. New members join the community every day to benefit from co working spaces, meeting rooms, events, and startup support programs. Impact Hub Switzerland operates seven locations in Basel, Bern, Geneva, Lausanne, and Zurich. It is part of the global Impact Hub network of 16,000 members in 100 Impact Hubs worldwide.
Website: https://www.impacthub.ch/
About Switzerland Global Enterprise
Switzerland Global Enterprise (S-GE) guides its clients on the path to new markets. On behalf of the Swiss Confederation (State Secretariat for Economic Affairs SECO) and the Swiss cantons, S-GE promotes exports and investments by helping its clients realize new potential for their international businesses and thus strengthens Switzerland as an economic hub. As the driver of a global network of experts and as a trusted and strong partner to clients, cantons, and the Swiss government, S-GE is the first point of contact in Switzerland for all questions relating to internationalization.
Website: https://www.s-ge.com/
