Park Ost: Entrepreneurship meets research
The Switzerland Innovation Park Ost is already a reality today. The organization aims to establish itself in the city of St. Gallen by the end of 2022. Companies should be able to implement their innovation projects in the laboratories, production rooms and offices of Park Ost, while the research institutions in eastern Switzerland bring their scientific expertise to project operation.
A lot of innovation is already happening three kilometers from the city center of St. Gallen. This is where Empa is located, the ETH Domain's interdisciplinary research institute for materials science and technology. Right next to it is a 35,000 square meter commercial property, where a community of start-ups, SMEs and technology-oriented companies has developed over the past ten years. The Startfeld association, a network for innovations and start-ups, is also located here. It provides managed premises – event rooms, meeting rooms, meeting points, a makerspace and a co-working space. There is also a publicly accessible canteen.
The Switzerland Innovation Park Ost aims to establish itself in this area by 2022. There are currently reserves of 9,000 square meters of commercial and industrial building land here. With a standard construction method of 18 meters high, this results in development potential of almost 18,000 square meters of usable space. For an initial expansion phase, there are plans to initially have around 6500 square meters of usable space. It is expected that this could be achieved by 2025. Two further expansion stages can be implemented as required.
The areas that are already available are suitable as clean rooms, laboratories and rooms for industrial production. Most of the available spaces have plenty of natural light and are therefore also suitable as offices, meeting rooms or for events.
Park Ost is to become a globally recognized center where companies in Eastern Switzerland promote innovations in selected areas on the basis of research by Empa, the St. Gallen Cantonal Hospital and the University of St. Gallen. The focus of innovation at Park Ost is dedicated to the development of technologies for health and medical technology as well as in the machine, electrical and metal industries. With regard to these technologies, he also deals with digitization – in particular artificial intelligence and the “Internet of Things”.
How does Park Ost actually create synergies between business and research? Companies can bring their projects to Park Ost. Depending on the scope of the projects, they also send employees to the park's location. The research institutions can also send employees to the park and thus bring research expertise into project operation. You support the project team of a company or work as your own project team.
Park Ost is run by a private stock corporation. Switzerland Innovation Park AG was founded at the beginning of September 2021. She gives herself ten years to make the Innovationspark Ost financially self-sustaining.
An external location of Park Ost is RhySearch in Buchs. A campus is planned there, where the University of Applied Sciences in Eastern Switzerland, the Buchs vocational and advanced training center and the Alpine Rhine Valley Precision Industry Center are located. The Buchs campus has 8,000 square meters of industrial building land reserves.