digitalswitzerland: world champions in digital innovation, too

Four people standing in a circle in a brightly-lit indoor industrial setting, photo taken from the outside.

Switzerland is held to be a world champion where innovation is concerned – but does that label still apply in the era of digitalisation? The digitalswitzerland initiative, founded by a strong alliance of Swiss corporations, universities, foundations and SMEs, aims to make sure that it does. As a nationwide cross-sector initiative, digitalswitzerland has succeeded, in a very short space of time, in putting the topic of digitalisation on the national agenda.

10 people standing in a row on an illuminated platform, in the middle is the presenter Stefan Schöbi.

From education to collaboration

digitalswitzerland’s prime aim, however, is to bring about tangible advancements through a wide range of activities, starting with improving the availability and quality of training for future digitalisation experts, and extending to funding for the start-up ecosystem and promoting public debate on the consequences of digitalisation through, for example, the recently-established Digitaltag facility. A further important pillar will be the cross-sector collaboration between companies and institutions.

Pioneer Fund as partner during the early years

In the first three years and with the support of the Migros Pioneer Fund, some important programmes have been rolled out and developed further, which today form part of the foundation of this initiative. Within the same period the activities went nationwide and as a result the initiative changed its name from «Digital Zurich 2025» to «digitalswitzerland».