Isochronic winner of the Innovation by Design Challenge

The Renens Entrepreneurship Week has been renewed with a new edition of the Innovation by Design Challenge co-organized by the City of Renens, the ECAL/Ecole cantonale d'art de Lausanne, the EPFL, the HEIG-VD, Innovaud and the Fondation des Ateliers de la Ville de Renens. 

This edition confirmed the very high quality of this competition, where numerous startups from EPFL were competing. The Challenge 2020 Prize and the City Council Prize both went to Isochronic (industrial automation). The Coup de Coeur du Public Prize went to Datacie (interface for the management of economic, financial and social information). 

Among the five finalist projects that were selected to participate in the workshop phase to develop their concept are : 

• Arcoscreen (EPFL) - Technologies to facilitate the discovery of new drugs; 
• Datacie (EPFL Innovation Park) - Management of economic, financial and social information; 
• Inergio (EPFL Innovation Park) - Fuel cells to transform butane or hydrogen into electricity; 
• Isochronic (Pully) - Industrial automation; 
• Wimpact (Lausanne) - Digital investment platform with a positive impact (climate, health, education). 

The challenge's concept is as follows: two designers are assigned to each company according to their field of expertise. Without knowing each other beforehand, companies and designers met during four workshops on four consecutive evenings. The workshops allowed them to : 

• meet each other and reframe the objective of the challenge; 
• reflect on the feedback on the user experience; 
• develop a solution; 
• prepare the public presentation. 

Winners : 
1. The Challenge 2020 Prize (8'000 CHF): Isochronic
2. The City Council Prize (1'000 CHF): Isochronic
Isochronic worked with industrial designers François Lafortune and Till Ronacher. 
3. The Coup de Coeur du Public Prize (2'000 CHF): Datacie
Datacie worked with designers Camilla Chappuis-Hanson and Pablo Bellon.