After the founding meeting on September 2, 2021 and the extraordinary general meeting on June 15, 2022, the Chairman of the Board of Directors, Roland Ledergerber, warmly welcomed the shareholders of Switzerland Innovation Park Ost AG (SIP Ost) to the first ordinary general meeting on June 20, 2023. He reflected on the most important business aspects of the intensive first financial year, in which significant development work was done.
The successful start of the SIP Ost was made possible by the development and approval of the basic strategy in close cooperation with the Board of Directors. At the same time, partnerships were initiated with the Switzerland Innovation Foundation and the research partners. The groundbreaking boost came with the merger with Startfeld, which made it possible to achieve the most important goal for the year, operational functionality.
However, the construction work is far from complete. Hans Ebinger, CEO, gave an overview of the current activities and emphasized that the focus is now on the realization of lighthouse projects. His outlook on the promising future offers for knowledge transfer and networking in the areas of digitization, sensor technology and health rounded off the general assembly.
In a second part of the program with other guests, around 50 participants took the opportunity to take a look behind the scenes at SIP Ost. The focus was on the presentation of the “Innovation Park East Knowledge Database (SIP Ost KDB)” by Urs Sidler, Project manager for SIP Ost. This knowledge database will become the exemplary basic equipment of the SIP East to document knowledge about the competencies of companies and research institutions.
All relevant websites of companies and organizations are recorded. In addition, the SIP Ost KDB will be able to automatically process news from the network via a community newsletter. The way in which such a system works was explained in an exciting presentation by Prof. Dr. Siegfried Handschuh, University of St.Gallen “The Language of AI: Large Language Models – LLM”. He presented the opportunities and challenges of LLM language models using meaningful examples. In doing so, he sharpened the audience’s understanding of the importance of digital transformation based on the possibilities that so-called generative artificial intelligence offers today.
As a further speaker, Hans Ebinger presented the flagship project “Swiss Sensor Hub”, which is to be set up as an innovation laboratory for new products and services. The use of sensor technology on humans should enable solutions for future healthcare. The Swiss Sensor Hub is to be developed, tested and brought to life with appropriate events in collaboration with research partners, important companies in the industry, healthcare providers, insurers, new start-ups and politicians.
At the end, all participants were thanked for their interest and their great support. At the subsequent apéro riche, there was lively further discussion and the exchange between the valued participants.
