Partners 2017

Gold Partners

Interview with Christine Bisschops Kaltenbach
Pharma Development Site Head - Basel
F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd.

How do the values of Roche match with TED’s?
Let me start by sharing our purpose statement at Roche: Doing now what patients need next. Our values include courage, integrity & passion. Likewise, TED believes passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and, ultimately, the world. Innovation is at the core of what we do here at Roche and we believe connecting people is an important element of what makes us successful.

How are ideas shared within your organization?
Our company values encourage diversity and we put a great emphasis on an inclusive and supportive work environment where people can share their ideas and provide different perspectives on a day to day basis. We also have a number of Innovation Groups within Roche locally and globally. Here in Basel, we have BIG (Basel Innovation Group), a cross functional purposeful network for innovation across the Basel Site. They actually had the idea and established our partnership with TEDxBasel!

What is the most interesting idea/project happening within Roche currently?
As you can imagine, there are many interesting projects going on in Roche. Let me highlight one that is very close to my heart. We live in an ever-increasing digitised world and making sense of the wealth of real world data that is out there to answer scientific questions and foster innovation is a real opportunity and a challenge at the same time. We need to build those capabilities within our respective areas yet at the same time strengthen our collaboration across departments to ensure we continue to share and leverage knowledge.

What are the upcoming challenges in your industry?
First and foremost there are huge unmet medical needs out there e.g. in central nervous system disorders, in rare diseases and infectious diseases. Developing medicines that are truly innovative and paradigm-shifting is the greatest challenge and opportunity. I mentioned the growing challenge of digitisation already. Finally, including the voice of our most important customers, the patients, in developing new medicines.

How is your company contributing to the present and future of Switzerland?
Swiss Post is an important pillar in the infrastructure of Switzerland, providing postal, logistics, public transportation and financial services to private and commercial customers alike. With its continued focus on providing services along the interface of the physical and digital worlds, Swiss Post is actively contributing to the digital transformation in Switzerland. Interested in new trends and technologies, Swiss Post is pushing innovation in all of its four markets for more efficient and convenient services.

What are the upcoming challenges in your industry?
One of the biggest challenges for postal organisations is the digital transformation, particularly in the field of communication. New trends on the horizon indicate that this will not remain the only challenge ahead. the Automation, the sharing economy and the global financial market situation will all continue to have significant impacts on our daily business for the foreseeable future.

How does The Swiss Post drive innovation?
Swiss Post has a dedicated unit to identify, foster and bring innovations to market. We are actively involving our 61,000 employees in finding ideas and developing them into workable business models. We have a number of internal and partnership programmes to drive innovation culture forward. Open Innovation is an important principle for us: We collaborate with other companies, start-ups and universities to develop future services. We maintain also connections to innovation hot spots such as Berlin or Silicon Valley. Dedicated budgets enable quick development and go-to-market for new and promising business ideas.

Why is The Swiss Post partnering with TEDxBasel?
There is no innovation without collaboration. Getting new inspiration, sharing ideas and collaborating are all important factors to drive innovation forward. TEDx is a popular and multi-faceted platform that strengthens all three of these foundations of innovation, all while combining them with a regional approach that ensures coverage of all regions in Switzerland. This way, Swiss Post can contribute to and benefit from a wide range of topics in Switzerland, for Switzerland.

Silver Partners

What are the upcoming challenges in your industry?
Societal and technological trends echo back to the live communication industry. The purpose of live meetings is to meet people, share experience and emotionalise through live experience. New technology such as virtual glasses are isolating products which might not really change the live communication industry. But live streaming and experiencing events virtually will be becoming a standard supplement in live communications. Embedded 360° cameras which allow to virtually sit in the orchestra exist today already. On the society side, the event industry has to continue serving new formats to keep the attention span of the audience alive by allowing more active audience participation that attracts and returns real value.

How does Vantage drive innovation?
To be innovative we foster an open and collaborative environment. Great ideas are seldom a single spark idea of one person but an iterative process which involves many people. The ability of learning is an important asset as well. If you are able and willing to learn from others and from your own failures, you are open to go down new paths with confidence and responsibility.

How are ideas shared within your organization?
Every week we review 2 events to allow others to learn about what went well and what should be done better. Networking the experiences creates a strong collaborative expertise. Designs are always shared in a group of people to collect feedback, criticism and ideas before sending it to our customers. On top of that we run a very lively WhatsApp Group where we share ideas, short notes, things that we see being onsite.

Why is Vantage partnering with TEDxBasel?
Like TEDx, we believe from the bottom of our hearts, “in the power of ideas to change attitude lives and ultimately the world.” We are proud to have a skill set which allows us to support the efforts of the local TEDx curators to provide an event that adds value to the community.

How does Vantage drive innovation?
To be innovative we foster an open and collaborative environment. Great ideas are seldom a single spark idea of one person but an iterative process which involves many people. The ability of learning is an important asset as well. If you are able and willing to learn from others and from your own failures, you are open to go down new paths with confidence and responsibility.

How are ideas shared within your organization?
Every week we review 2 events to allow others to learn about what went well and what should be done better. Networking the experiences creates a strong collaborative expertise. Designs are always shared in a group of people to collect feedback, criticism and ideas before sending it to our customers. On top of that we run a very lively WhatsApp Group where we share ideas, short notes, things that we see being onsite.

Why is Vantage partnering with TEDxBasel?
Like TEDx, we believe from the bottom of our hearts, “in the power of ideas to change attitude lives and ultimately the world.” We are proud to have a skill set which allows us to support the efforts of the local TEDx curators to provide an event that adds value to the community.

How does the EPFL-EssentialTech Program drive innovation?
Contrary to the usual philosophy in academia, which is driven by a quest to push the boundaries of knowledge, we, at EssentialTech, are need-driven. In other words, all our projects are based on concrete and documented needs in healthcare emanating from low and middle income countries and, whenever possible, also corroborated by internationally recognized Health and Humanitarian Organisations, such as the WHO, ICRC and MSF. In order to genuinely address that need/challenge, we embark on a complete rethinking and novel conception of the technology solution, in conjunction with the rationale use of proven state-of-the-art technologies.

Why are we partnering with TEDxBasel?
Basel has a long and strong history & tradition in healthcare innovation, as epitomised by world-leading organisations, such as Novartis and others present here. And one of the world’s leading institutions in Tropical Medicine, the Swiss Tropical & Public Health Institute, is also located here in Basel. Therefore, we believe that TEDxBasel is an excellent and ideal platform to consolidate and expand our allies & support for our initiatives at EssentialTech.

What are the upcoming challenges in your area of activity?
Besides infectious diseases, an emerging and potentially greater health challenge is in the form of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), which account for 63% of all deaths, i.e. 36 million out 57 million global deaths. And 80% of NCD deaths actually occur in low- and middle-income countries. Within NCDs, cardiovascular and mental health are increasingly posing immense challenges. In particular, Type 2 diabetes has been rising more rapidly in middle- and low-income countries. Diabetes is one of the leading causes of death today, and the majority of these deaths actually occur in low and middle income countries. In Mental Health, Epilepsy and Depression are particularly noteworthy. For example, today there are about 50 million people worldwide who have epilepsy and nearly 80% of them live in low- and middle-income countries. However, about 3/4 of people with epilepsy living in low- and middle- income countries do not get the treatment they need.

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