Grüezi Switzerland – HYVE Switzerland as a new agile heavyweight in the Swiss innovation landscape
About the added value of HYVE Switzerland
In order to serve the Swiss market as well as the German or Austrian market, HYVE relies on an excellently networked and entrepreneurial team on site, which it found in ATIZO.
ATIZO is an established Open Innovation expert in the Swiss market and has access to over 2.5 million community members serving a wide range of formats. Since its foundation in 2008, over 200 clients from 20 industries and more than 6 countries have been served in 500 projects. In the past, ATIZO’s clients included Nestlé, Migros, the WWF, Postfinance and Wella. Together with ATIZO, JTI has also successfully implemented the most advanced innovation methods and tools in the company.
The services consulting, workshops, software and co-creation will be optimally expanded and supplemented by HYVE’s expertise. HYVE Switzerland now combines not only the methodological expertise around innovation issues, but now also a pioneering role in the areas of user research, industrial design, digital innovations and the extensive use of technologies such as artificial intelligence or VR/AR in the innovation context.
This creates a real powerhouse of innovation in Switzerland and HYVE increases its sales activities in the DACH region through the merger.
Despite and because of COVID-19? Why now?
The Corona crisis should not slow down the merger that has been planned for a long time. On the contrary!
Adrian Gerber and Daniel Krebser are the managing directors of HYVE Switzerland and are convinced that the economic and social changes brought about by COVID-19 will have a positive influence on the willingness to innovate and the development potential of many companies. HYVE Switzerland wants to make the positive chances from the crisis visible and usable for its customers and support them with a strong service portfolio and implementation experience in a targeted manner: From now on as an End2End provider of innovation with a strongly extended toolset in conception, design and development of product, service and digital innovations as well as start-up and company building.
About the acquisition and first success stories
HYVE and ATIZO have known each other for years as market companions and have already successfully accompanied clients in innovation projects in the past. As open innovation and crowdsourcing pioneers, both ATIZO and HYVE have strongly shaped the European market. To merge these long-standing success stories into one, to bundle forces and to expand the HYVE One-Stop Shop for Innovation has a great potential – especially in Switzerland, which ranked first in the global Innovation Index 2018 & 2019.
Our new Swiss colleagues
Adrian Gerber comes from an entrepreneurial family and studied business administration and media communication sciences at the Universities of Berne and Fribourg. After gaining more than 15 years of experience in innovation and product management in the food and medical technology industry, Adrian made a management buy-out in 2013, together with Daniel, at the former ATIZO AG and has been working independently with ATIZO 360° since then. In addition to innovation, wine, nature and CrossFit inspire him.
Daniel Krebser is an internet pioneer with over 20 years of experience in developing new products and services for fast growing companies and disruptive business models.
Since 7 years Rafael Gerber has been leading innovation projects in various industries and has been helping companies to establish and expand their innovation management.
