Partnership between NEST and the Innovation Park Central Switzerland

The Innovation Park Central Switzerland and NEST have a common goal: to promote innovations for buildings and neighborhoods. In both organizations, business, research and the public sector work together to realize this goal. In order to accelerate the innovation processes, the Innovation Park Central Switzerland, which is dedicated to the topic of "Building Excellence", and NEST are now entering into a partnership.

"Innovationspark Zentralschweiz has extensive expertise in conceptualizing innovative solutions in the building sector, while the NEST team and its partners specialize in implementing and demonstrating such concepts," explains Melissa Kneubühler, Innovation Coordinator at Innovationspark Zentralschweiz. The partners see "enormous potential" in the cooperation. In order to exploit this potential, NEST representatives will be involved in the Innovation Park's "labs" in the future. In these labs, partners will work together to develop solutions and answer specific questions in line with the "open innovation" approach.

The NEST team will primarily contribute in the areas of digitalization, energy and circular economy, thus complementing the competencies of the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts. The concepts developed in the labs can ultimately be implemented and further developed in NEST. "With NEST, we have a test environment here at Empa in which real conditions prevail. This allows us to efficiently validate concepts that we develop together with Innovationspark Zentralschweiz and evaluate their marketability," says NEST Managing Director Reto Largo. For both parties, one thing is certain: by joining forces, the innovative strength and competitiveness of all partners in the construction sector will be significantly strengthened. (bw)