Canton Fribourg explores opportunities in the Boston area
Canton Fribourg explores opportunities in the Boston area
Canton Fribourg has bet on innovation for its long term economic development policy. As part of that strategy, a delegation led by Beat Vonlanthen, Minister of Economic Affairs of the Canton and representatives of the University and the College of Engineering and Architecture visited the Boston area. On their agenda: discussing best practices with local practitioners of the innovation ecosystem.
The delegation arrived with a focus on improving the concept of the future zero-carbon technology park that will be built on the site of the Cardinal brewery in downtown Fribourg. To create the best park and position Fribourg at the forefront of innovation in sustainable architecture, the delegation was very interested in discovering the local institutions and companies’ best practices. What are the success models of incubators? How to incentivize all the players of an innovation ecosystem to collaborate? How to enhance Fribourg’s innovation assets around a new branding strategy? These were just a handful of questions during the delegation’s visits to the Cambridge Innovation Center, the Gateway Park in Worcester, the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard, MassChallenge, the MOITI and the Fraunhofer Center for Sustainable Energy Systems.
Another objective of the visit was to deepen the academic presence of the Fribourg colleges and universities in Massachusetts. To this end, the delegates of the University of Fribourg and the College of Engineering visited the campus of the Worcester Polytechnics Institute to expand an already existing collaboration between WPI and the School of Business Administration-Fribourg.
Last but not least, their visit was an unique occasion for swissnex Boston to gather more than thirty alumni from the University of Fribourg or people having spent some time in the Fribourg area for the first Fribourgissima night in Boston. Created under the aegis of the Chamber of commerce Fribourg and the State Fribourg, Fribourgissima aims to connect a large network of people from Fribourg or active in the canton at some point in their life and now living around Switzerland and all over the world.
