Once again, a positive trend in setting up new companies — last year, employees and graduates of ETH Zurich founded 22 spin-offs. That brings the total over the past five years to 110 spin-offs from ETH Zurich.
Never before have so many companies been founded in Switzerland as were last year. This was recently reported by the economic news agency Dun & Bradstreet. ETH Zurich confirmed this trend and can once again look back on a successful year of spin-offs, which, according to Roland Siegwart, Vice President Research and Corporate Relations, "emphatically demonstrates that ETH Zurich has been able to establish an efficient, sustainable channel for technology transfer".
The 22 new spin-offs are active in a wide range of areas: five companies deal with information and communications technology, seven are in the consulting and services branches, three in mechanical engineering, two each in medical devices and electrical engineering, and one each in chemical processes, biotechnology and pharma, and sensors/analytics. Just as varied as these areas are the countless applications being addressed; for example, one spin-off is developing fibre-optic monitoring solutions for geotechnical applications, and another specialises in visual speed sensors that can be applied not only to vehicles but also to people.
Cleantech well covered
If you examine these spin-offs in regard to the conservation of natural resources, three of the new companies can be placed in the category of "cleantech". That term stands for those products, processes and services that conserve natural resources and reduce negative impacts on the environment. The number of cleantech companies has been growing over the past few years, and this trend continued in 2011. Among the newly established cleantech companies last year was BEN Energy. This spin-off develops energy efficiency and smart grid software with the goal of motivating consumers to act in an energy-efficient way. Underlying the development of BEN Energy were findings from behavioural economics, psychology and the computer games industry.
Prestigious awards and impressive amounts of prize money
In 2011, independent organisations evaluated the business models and successful operations of ETH spin-offs and recognised their efforts with a number of awards. Start-ups from ETH won, among others, the Swiss Technology Award, the Swiss Economic Award and the ZKB Pioneer Award. The spin-off Optotune became first in a ranking of the Top 100 Start-Ups of the last five years, compiled by the "Institut für Jungunternehmen". In addition, the ETH spin-off Dacuda, with its scanner mouse, was singled out by the global media company Red Herring as one of the top 100 most innovative companies in the world. In total, ETH spin-offs received prize money last year amounting to almost CHF 1 million. In addition, the ICT spin-off Procedural was successfully sold to ESRI, a major company located in California, and in 2011 the biotech spin-offs BioVersys, Biognosys and Malcisbo each received funding commitments of between CHF 2.5 million and CHF 3.6 million.
On Thursday, 12 January, the best ten business ideas will be recognised at ETH Zurich as part of "venture" 2012, the national business plan competition. "venture" is an initiative of McKinsey & Company, Switzerland, ETH Zurich, the Commission for Technology and Innovation (CTI) and Knecht Holding.
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