What makes Y-PARC and its incubator special

Y-PARC is one of the oldest Technology Parks in Switzerland. What are the specific characteristics?
Y-PARC was created about 25 years ago with a strong support of municipal, cantonal and federal governments. The park has a huge area of 52 hectares – it means more than 50 football squares – and has kept until now a strategic stock of land available for new development projects. The first specificity of Y-PARC is to host at the same time start-ups, SMEs and big international players, and to provide both an innovation ecosystem and an industrial environment. So you can find on the park R&D labs, but also production centers. The second one is that Y-PARC is a multidisciplinary and open-minded technology park. It is not specialized in one or another sector, but aims to host a diversity of competences and know-how and to encourage cross-projects and create synergies between its residents.

At Y-PARC 130 companies with 1200 employees are active. How many of them are start-ups?
Depending on the exact definition of “start-up”, Y-PARC counts between 20 and 35 start-ups. A number of them have been or are still hosted in Y-START business incubator, but other start-ups simply rent offices or labs in other buildings of the park.

When and why was the incubator at Y-PARC founded and how many start-ups are supported today by the incubator team?
A young incubator on an “old” technology park, indeed… Our incubation program – named Y-START – has been set up about 4 years ago only. We developed from scratch this new offer in order to provide adapted solutions for young start-ups, spin-offs from the applied research & development institutes of the University of Applied Sciences in Business and Engineering of the Canton of Vaud (HEIG-VD). Not much time after opening the Y-START incubation program, we decided to open it to others start-ups as well, that would like to join Y-PARC in order to set up engineering collaborative projects with HEIG-VD. Today, the incubator hosts 10 start-ups, and 5 more have already left the incubator and are now expanding their activities in others premises on the park or in the neighbourhoods. In total, more than 60 jobs have been created in the region. About half of the start-ups are coming out directly from HEIG-VD institutes.

What does the incubator has to offer for start-ups?
Within the incubator – where the start-ups can stay for a 2 years period – we provide “ready for use” offices, workshops and shared premises and infrastructures, coaching services, networking and socialize opportunities, as well as customized back office services. We work in close relationship with various partners, mainly Innovaud, the supporting platform for innovation in the Canton of Vaud (Y-PARC is one of the founders and Y-START hosts an office of Innovaud) and CTI Start-Up for its coaching and training programs. In addition, we provide to the start-ups a preferred access to the institutes of HEIG-VD and to the industrial companies located on the park. 2 people of our team share their time between HEIG-VD and Y-PARC to ensure a daily effective collaboration.

A relevant share of the start-ups at the incubator are spin-offs from HEIG-VD. Usually universities of applied sciences have only a very small number of spin-offs because their research projects are mostly collaborations with industrial partners. Why does HEIG-VD have an exceptional high number of spin-offs? Are there research projects without industrial partners?
First of all, it should be stressed that there is no contradiction between an efficient technology transfer (TT) to industry and a high number of spin-offs created. But there are strong synergies between these two activities.

Thanks to its 13 specialized R&D institutes and multidisciplinary research groups, HEIG-VD has become a hot spot for TT. The Center for technology transfer of HEIG-VD has just released the figures for 2014: a total turnover of more than CHF 20 million has been produced by some 125 engineers and scientific employees.

But behind such gratifying figures there is a great challenge to be faced daily: how to retain and sustain these skills inside HEIG-VD within a so competitive human resources market? A university cannot be competitive with a private company only in regards to salary and career opportunity! Retaining the best employees must be based on the two main advantages that HEIG-VD can provide: a daily opportunity to improve scientific knowledge and skills, and opportunities to create a start-up.

That is precisely why HEIG-VD has created a few years ago the « Bourse HEIG-VD Start-up », that provides a strong support to the best entrepreneurship projects and allows them to pursue activities within a R&D institutes with the goal to spin-off. A large number of HEIG-VD spin-offs have been granted by « Bourse HEIG-VD Start-up ». What is even more interesting is that those spin-offs will launch then a lot of new collaboration projects, mainly CTI projects, with their native R&D institute. And the new CTI projects will allow the institutes to reinforce and increase its competences and to generate new TT. That is why we can say that TT and spin-offs creation is a virtuous circle!

What is done at HEIG-VD to foster entrepreneurship?
Since 2006, HEIG-VD has been strongly involved in entrepreneurship support programs. The University has developed many training programs and incentives to boost entrepreneurship spirit and start-ups creation. The 13 R&D institutes and groups also take part to the development of new products and innovative technologies. But the two main incentives of HEIG-VD are:

• Innokick program, that is the origin of the new « Master of Science HES-SO in Integrated Innovation for Product and Business »
• « Bourse HEIG-VD Start-up » that has already supported 14 start-ups (most of them are hosted by Y-START business incubator) and is really considerated as a pre-incubation program within the R&D institutes.

Furthermore, the HEIG-VD Business Management Department has created a principal training program in the field of business development and proposes specialized entrepreneurship trainings to students in engineering.

Last but not least, a new initiative is planned to be launched in 2015 in order to make all the HEIG-VD students and scientific employees more sensitive about entrepreneurship and to provide them early stage training programs.

Another part of start-ups at Y-PARC choose Yverdon because they want to collaborate with HEIG-VD. What are the focus areas in research at the university that are attractive for start-ups?
HEIG-VD and Y-PARC are very attractive not only for start-ups and companies located in the region, but for other Swiss or foreign enterprises as well. What is most important for them is the effectiveness of the applied research and development available in our ecosystem. The great professional know-how and 15 years’ experience of collaboration with all kind of companies and industries are particularly appreciated.

The R&D institutes of HEIG-VD benefit from highly qualified and experimented engineers, but also from young Bachelor and Master degree engineers. In addition, thanks to a number of research programs at European (EUREKA, INTERREG, FP7), national (CTI, FNS, OFEN) and cantonal (Innovaud, SPECo, FIT) level, the institutes provide a preferred access to funding for innovative projects. Many entrepreneurs and start-ups coming from abroad (Lotaris, CashSentinel, Combagroup) have succeeded thanks to the collaboration with HEIG-VD.

HEIG-VD specializes also in different clusters and some of those are unique in Switzerland:

• IT security, intelligent data analysis (http://iict.heig-vd.ch)
• Web of Things, embedded information systems
• Micro-welding with ESA accreditation (http://www.heig-vd.ch/rad/swi)
• Thermic engineering (magnetic refrigeration technology)
• Robotics, materials and packaging technology
• Renewable energy and green technology, smartgrid

At Y-PARC are a lot of older high tech companies. Can start-ups in the incubator and at the park benefit from this? Are there collaborations between start-ups and those companies?
That is a relevant aspect of our USP. We really aim to encourage collaborations between start-ups and industrial players. When we detect an opportunity for a strategic alliance or partnership, we try to create the matching. We have the chance to have a number of executives of those industrial companies that have a strong entrepreneurship spirit and are keen to support young start-ups. We have a few examples of successful collaborative pilot projects in prototyping or in marketing.

What are the next steps for Y-PARC and the incubator?
Y-PARC has a large potential for further development: 25 hectares of land, it means half of the total area of the park. We plan a long-term and qualitative development. We would like to enhance our strategic clusters, mainly in cyber security, mechatronic and industrial automation, medtech and technology for sport industry. In relation to that point, we are proud to be part of the “EPFL Hub” within the Swiss Innovation Park project.

In terms of infrastructure, the next step will be to develop the frameworks conditions of the park by building the future heart of Y-PARC. I mean a multifunctional services center that will host new restaurants, shops, a nursery, a fitness, etc.

Regarding the incubator, the next step is to increase our human resources in order to increase the number and the quality of the services we provide to the start-ups. Last but not least, Y-START team will be closely associated to the new entrepreneurship and innovation programs that are currently being developed by HEIG-VD and will be soon available.