“We need two-way communication with our industry partners”

Every year ETH Zurich launches over 1,000 new research collaborations with industry, governmental agencies, hospitals, non-profit organisations and other institutions in Switzerland and abroad. To strengthen and extend the dialogue and interaction with partners in the public and private sector, Vanessa Wood, Vice President for Knowledge Transfer and Corporate Relations, is grouping together all the people at the university working at the interface with external partners driving innovation forward. The groups responsible for research contracts, industry relations and Innovation Park Zurich are now working together under the leadership of Jeannine Pilloud.  

“I am absolutely delighted to have Jeannine Pilloud joining us and taking on this new role,” says Vanessa Wood. "Her vast experience in the public and private sector, and her network, are of terrific value for ETH.”

Jeannine Pilloud already has an initial idea of her future role at ETH Zurich. In the following interview she talks about her motivation for taking on the post at ETH and describes her first impressions.

ETH News: Ms Pilloud, you have certainly had an illustrious career. You were Head of Passenger Transport at Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) and a member of the SBB Group Executive Board. Then you spent two and a half years as CEO of Ascom. Not so long ago you were also in the spotlight in your capacity as President of Migros-Genossenschafts-Bund, Switzerland’s largest retail group. What motivated you to take on your new non-executive role at ETH Zurich?
Jeannine Pilloud: That’s funny – I was asked a similar question when I left SBB after almost nine years. Many people didn’t understand my motives, but it was quite clear to me at the time that I had already achieved what I wanted at SBB. A higher status or salary have never been important to me – it’s always been about the work itself. In my eyes, the job at ETH has a lot of similarities with the role of a board member, even if certain tasks have some operational aspects. I can roll up my sleeves and work with the team to get something done. I definitely don’t want to be CEO anymore – I’ve already done that.

And why choose ETH Zurich?
ETH is an institution very close to my heart. I studied architecture here and learnt the meaning of creativity. Whatever the challenge is: How do I describe the task and how do I go about it so that everything functions as it should? I carried over that approach to my career in industry. Now I’d like to pass on some of the corporate experience I’ve acquired over the past 35 years.

If you had to describe ETH in just three words – what would you say?
Brillant open minds. Even as a student I was very impressed by the enormous breadth of thinking. There are no limits to the imagination. Once you finish university and go to work for a company, there are always areas where free thinking is barred, and that’s the most difficult thing when you move from academia to employment. That’s also one of the reasons why many people go back to work for a start-up after a few years’ experience in a big company, as open thinking is precisely what is needed. This was exactly the path I chose when I set up Le Shop, forerunner of the Migros Online store.

In your new role you will also have to address this cultural difference between academia and industry. Where do you think action is needed?
Over the past few weeks I’ve had discussions with all the teams about what needs to be done. People were inspired by the fresh momentum. I bring an outsider’s view, and together we’ll explore exactly what that means for the teams. That’s not only enjoyable, but also releases a certain amount of pressure, since we can’t implement all our ideas at the same time. Everyday business has to carry on as usual, after all. We need to identify what opportunities there are for companies to get in touch with ETH. But we also need to make sure we transfer our own innovations more quickly to industry. At the moment there’s still a sort of Chinese wall blocking the way here.

In what sense?
Our university is synonymous with innovation. But you can’t simply produce research results to order. Research always has an open outcome. Companies often see innovation differently: they define the innovation in question, then commission a team to put it into practice. This is sometimes a source of conflict: you cannot arrange innovation as if it were part of a mid-term plan – it’s more of an ambition. If a company has such ambition in five areas, and it works out in two of them, that’s already a major success. That’s why it’s important for industry to understand that any results from their collaboration with ETH cannot be implemented on a “one-to-one” basis.

So ultimately, it’s a question of communication …
Yes, communication is a crucial aspect. Our approach in the Office of Knowledge Transfer and Corporate Relations, which is a relatively young vice presidency, tends to be more reactive at present. We receive enquiries from industry and forward them to the professors. But that’s not good enough. We need to go to industry ourselves and ask them what they expect from ETH, and then see what we can actually offer. We need two-way communication to develop our offering. I am looking forward to tackling these tasks with the teams.