The government has nominated Roland Ledergerber as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Innovationspark Ost AG. The joint-stock company is currently in the process of being founded. According to the shareholders’ agreement, the canton of St.Gallen, as the main shareholder, has the right to nominate the president of the board of directors.
The chairmanship of the board of directors for Innovationspark Ost AG was publicly advertised in mid-February 2021. A total of around 60 applications were received. Due to the nomination process and taking into account the defined requirement profile, the election committee, made up of two members of the government, decided to propose Roland Ledergerber to the government as a whole for nomination as President of the Board of Directors of Innovationspark Ost AG. The government is now supporting this proposal for the attention of the shareholders’ meeting.
Roland Ledergerber (1961) moved to the St.Galler Kantonalbank in 1998 after various positions in corporate development and in corporate customer business at UBS in Switzerland and abroad. In 2002 he was appointed to the Executive Board and from 2008 to 2021 he served as President of the Executive Board. At the beginning of May 2021, Roland Ledergerber was elected as a member of the Board of Directors of the St.Galler Kantonalbank. He has also been President of the IHK St.Gallen-Appenzell since 2018.
Innovation Park East as the location of Switzerland Innovation
In mid-April, the Federal Council approved the inclusion of the Innovationspark Ost as a location for Switzerland Innovation. This is a big and important milestone for the generation project. The task of the board of directors will be to consistently promote the development of the Innovation Park East. The Innovationspark Ost is intended to offer a development, laboratory and work infrastructure that national and international research teams from companies and scientific institutions can use for joint innovation projects. In this environment, the players can further increase their competitiveness and innovative performance.
At the same time, the Innovation Park East must be integrated into the network of the five existing Switzerland Innovation locations and bring in the strengths of Eastern Switzerland as a place of work and thought.
Focus on eastern Swiss strengths
The Innovationspark Ost incorporates the core competencies of Eastern Switzerland’s economy and universities. He focuses on the innovation priorities of health, digitization of business models as well as the mechanical, electrical and metal industries. On the research side, the Empa St.Gallen and the St.Gallen Cantonal Hospital are involved in the subject area “Health and medical technology”. In the “MEM industry” area, the research work is being carried out by the Eastern Swiss University of Applied Sciences and the RhySearch research institute in Buchs. The University of St.Gallen contributes its scientific expertise to the development of new services, processes and business models. With the Lerchenfeld campus in the immediate vicinity of Empa in the city of St.Gallen and the campus in Buchs, the East Innovation Park has locations with a high-quality, expandable infrastructure.
