The St.Gallen government discussed the application for the Innovationspark Ost and approved the dossier. The next step is to formally submit the application to the Switzerland Innovation Foundation, which is responsible for assessing the content. This means another important milestone for the project. The planned Innovationspark Ost is based on the strengths of Eastern Switzerland’s economy and science.

St.Gallen wants to become part of the Switzerland Innovation network and has prepared an application for an East Innovation Park for this purpose. The corresponding dossier has successfully passed an initial preliminary check in the past few months and, based on the feedback, received the final touches. Now that the St.Gallen government has passed the application, the application is about to reach the next significant milestone with the submission to the Switzerland Innovation Foundation: At the request of the Foundation Council, the Federal Council will finally decide whether St.Gallen should be awarded the contract as a location carrier in the network of the Swiss innovation park.

Existing strengths as the basis for success

The Innovationspark Ost builds on the existing strengths of Eastern Swiss companies and those of the scientific institutions in the economic area. The park links business areas of companies in the fields of health and medical technology as well as the MEM industry (e.g. optics and photonics) with cutting-edge research and thus creates the conditions for successful innovations. This lowers the thresholds, especially for SMEs, for access to research institutes and promotes scientific cooperation. This creates an efficient innovation ecosystem that enables scientific and economic cooperation within the value chain of the company. The innovation park is to be located in the building complex of the St.Galler Tagblatt on Fürstenlandstrasse in St.Gallen next to Empa.

From the government’s point of view, the Innovation Park East opens up significant opportunities for the economic area of ​​Eastern Switzerland, especially in the current situation. Thanks to their high level of specialization and the quality of their products, local companies are internationally competitive, but in view of global trends they are also required to expand and strengthen their current innovation processes. The park is intended to help ensure that companies in eastern Switzerland remain among the best in the future.