EPFL launches KNOVA to push new partnership opportunities
KNOVA - new partnering program for EPFL and Industry © Alain Herzog 2021
Codenamed KNOVA, the project takes its inspiration from kilonovae, phenomena that occur when two stars fuse to generate precious metals, a fitting metaphor for the advantages of combining academics and industry. This is a unique program, which primarily seeks to create flexible, practical, and impactful relationships between companies and EPFL so that everyone involved can benefit as much as possible. KNOVA’s goal is to accelerate strategic partnerships so that research can continue to push forward and new discoveries can be harnessed for the good of society.
EPFL has been attracting businesses since the day it was founded.
The proof of this is in the pudding, which in this case is the EPFL Innovation Park, located in the south of the Campus. With nearly 30 large companies, over 150 startups, 11 SMEs, and more than 20 service providers, it’s full to capacity! However, while it is undoubtedly a success, there are other aspects to it. In a world that changes at an incredible pace, where more and more innovations are being made, it’s crucial to be able to keep up the number of companies at the Innovation plant, in order to provide the ingredients for research and keep up the prestige of the school. If not, the competition, the pursuit of excellence, and the new partnerships will begin to stagnate. Momentum is needed so that these two-way relationships between the academic and business world can continue to expand, multiply, and blossom.
This was the train of thought that led to the KNOVA program, implemented in 2021 via the company Chargeurs, which is acting as an early adopter.
KNOVA provides all the structural conditions for the development of links between our company and EPFL. And we have experienced this by being on site at the Innovation Park for a year. We only have time to move forward on concrete things and the benefit is obvious: we get the best from the research excellence, the startups, and the companies in the ecosystem and we contribute to the effervescence of the ecosystem. All this makes this program unique.
KNOVA has a bright future ahead of it, with companies from all sectors already having signed up for 2022.
The main goal will remain increasing opportunities between industry and the academic world by fostering strong partnerships. In the words of Federico Matteini, Business Developer at the Vice-Presidency for Innovation “Our relationship with the corporate world has become stronger over time, and has advanced hand in hand with the growth of the EPFL, the speed of innovation, the volatility of markets, and so on. We’ve noticed more and more that companies are wanting to work with the EPFL, but they don’t know how to do it or where to begin. They want to know what opportunities and benefit we can offer within the EPFL ecosystem, and how they can go about supplying their innovation pipeline through suitable partnerships with researchers, start-ups and industrial partners. Meanwhile, from our end, we’re keen to know whether a given company is a good partner for EPFL and a good fit with the other companies, start-ups, students, and researchers within the ecosystem. All these questions got the gears turning, and we started thinking about how we could more seamlessly create links between the corporate world and the ecosystem surrounding the EPFL. That’s when we came up with KNOVA.”
This accelerator for strategic partnerships will give industry stakeholders a chance to discover the EPFL ecosystem’s potential for innovation, and allow them to build efficient research partnerships to benefit the company, entrepreneurs, existing industrial partnerships, and, of course, the students, researchers and start-ups. Although KNOVA is aimed at companies—that is, after all, it’s raison d’être—the program will be central for students and researchers, who can use it to easily build potential partnerships for their projects, which could include research, job opportunities or even creating a company of their own.
We are living in an ever more digital and interconnected age. If society and industry genuinely want to resolve the most pressing problems we are facing, they need to invest in creating strategic partnerships with leading research institutes, such as EPFL.
The program offers favorable structural conditions for developing smart, practical, and effective synergies that stand to benefit everyone within the EPFL ecosystem. It’s a real win-win at every level, where experience meets knowledge and everyone comes out with more of both. It’s also well worth mentioning the huge amount of time saved by companies, since their needs are directly addressed and “connected” with the right people within the ecosystem.
KNOVA will run for a year, providing companies with twelve months to experience the value that the EPFL ecosystem offers when launching and/or developing innovative projects. The program is open to all companies from any sector.
