ETH Marketing – Anders Hagström

He is already known as the manager of ETH World, the programme for the virtual ETH campus. Anders Hagström will remain in this function until the end of the year. Since the 1st February, however, he has been investing most of his energy in the newly created position of Head of ETH marketing, which is part of the Office of the Rector. Hagström is a Finn and studied electro-engineering, business management and marketing at the Technical University of Helsinki. He's worked in university development for a number of years, amongst other places, in Cambridge. He arrived at ETH Zurich in 1999, initially as an assistant to the Pro-Rector for international relations. "The European market for education is reality today," says Hagström, "and the globalisation of higher education has received additional impetus with the Bologna process. Universities that want to play in this league have to act in line with the market.“

But doesn't the intention of ETH, to satisfy the changing needs of "customers", conflict with a university culture that, in the first instance, investigates matters thoroughly without taking return on investment into account? “ETH doesn't simply place any product on the shelf, it offers extremely complex services," says Hagström. Customary market values did not do justice to this. One of the main tasks of the ETH marketing will be to make ETH's current graduate programme (leading to a PhD) and the newly established Masters courses known to highly qualified candidates, also–and especially–abroad.

Hagström particularly wants to strengthen ETH's presence at fairs, exhibitions and in the international media–also in co-operation with communication specialists at ETH: "It might surprise some people, but the recognition and praise that ETH regularly gets in media reports in other countries always leads to a rise in the number of interested students for a short time. It's that simple it." Other important multiplicators are the government's Swiss Houses in the USA and Singapore and the science counselors in the bigger Swiss embassies.

Marketing is to be stepped up for the Bachelors courses in all German-speaking countries. And following the expansion of the EU, Eastern European countries had become one of the target regions for graduate marketing. Which countries could provide ETH with a model for its market appearance? "Britain and the USA are only suitable to a certain extent; their language/cultural and structural lead is too strong,“ according to Hagström. But perhaps it would be worthwhile to look to Finland. Hagström himself experienced the internationalisation process there already 20 years ago when courses of study in English were introduced. This is why Finnish universities succeed in attracting large numbers of foreign students today.

Responsible for a professional presentation of ETH in marketing and innovations transfer: Head of Marketing, Anders Hagström (left) and Silvio Bonaccio, Head of ETH Transfer. large

ETH transfer – Silvio Bonaccio

Silvio Bonaccio has been with "ETH transfer" for the past four years, an ETH hinge between research and industrial application. At the beginning of 2005, ETH's Executive Board upgraded this office to an independent agency under the Vice-president Research and chose Bonaccio as head. Prior to this, on ETH Day 2004, ETH President Olaf Kübler had announced that ETH Zurich planned to double its science and technology transfer with industry.

Bonaccio himself admirably personifies the dual focus of ETH Transfer. On the one hand, he holds an ETH PhD in chemistry and has worked in research (on liposomes). On the other hand, as he says, he accomplished a "180 degree turn" in 1996, with a full-hearted involvement in industry. As a member of an advisory team at Nestlé, which initiated transformation processes in the food giant's globally distributed production plants–and fulfilled them. It took cultural competence as well as specialist knowledge to succeed in this exacting task; above all, foreign languages, lots of trust-building work and a flair for dealing with people, thinks Bonaccio.

These are precisely the key values needed for the successful transfer of innovation from university to industry, something that the new legal framework at ETH explicitly calls for since 2004. "It's a 'people business’“, says Silvio Bonaccio. The job of his experienced team, which counts nine people in the meantime, was to examine discoveries closely and in depth, conduct negotiations, or advise company founders and to sound out those who wanted to bring an idea born in the laboratory to market. Did they have enough energy and enthusiasm? How high is their frustration threshold? And, naturally, it was also a question of testing the business idea from the point of view of usefulness to the customer.

Some of the 130 ETH spin-off companies have become real success stories over recent years, such as Sensirion, Cytos or AutoForm. These firms have created jobs and are earning good money. But to transform ETH scientific and technological developments into products, co-operation with established companies is the norm. When it comes to finding a suitable partner, negotiating contracts or patenting discoveries, the ETH transfer team offers researchers help and support–free of charge. This is now to be considerably extended: "We plan to strengthen the team to twelve or thirteen people and combine our efforts with other innovation promotion initiatives running at ETH Zurich," says Bonaccio. It is a contribution that should not be underestimated to combat the widespread lamentations–whether true or not–of Switzerland's lack of innovation.