Review of the Zurich SME Innovation Day
On July 3, 2025, the Zurich SME Innovation Day took place for the third time at the ZHdK Toni Campus in Zurich. Once again, it offered a wide range of topics that were covered in short presentations and practical workshops.
How do I manage my company when the economy is in crisis? What specific fields of application for AI are there for SMEs? How can the circular economy be used as a business model? And how do I plan my company succession? Answers were found to these and many other questions - perhaps not always conclusive, but for the most part far-reaching. The topic of "Innovation" also met with a particularly high level of interest from the 200 or so registered visitors: How can innovations be initiated in your own company? The workshop, led by Adrian Burri from the ZHAW, was fully booked. It was designed as a "bridge-building workshop" and took a playful approach to the topic. The participants experienced how "doing" and "trying things out" quickly lead to results and act as a great lever for further decisions. This was of course fully in line with the motto of the conference: "Sustainable together: Achieving a big impact with small levers".
AI and its (side) effects
Christina Kehl, Innovation Association Swiss Labor Market, and Florence Bernays, Center for Leadership in the Future of Work, University of Zurich, also spoke about a topic that most entrepreneurs are currently particularly concerned with: Digitalization and artificial intelligence. Christina Kehl emphasized that AI is not just an IT topic (any more), but must be a matter for management. It is also important to check the quality of all processes before handing them over to AI. Florence Bernays pointed out that automation requires more than just technical skills. "Emotional intelligence is becoming increasingly important," she said in her short presentation. However, she regretted that companies were still investing very little in emotional intelligence.
In addition to digitalization, other challenges that concern many companies are staff turnover, high absenteeism and declining employee commitment. "There is a lack of emotional attachment to the company," stated Michael Schmidt-Purrmann, referring to a study by Gallup. To solve these problems, he presented the Vital@Work model, which aims to promote conscious collaboration, a performance-enhancing atmosphere, lively teamwork and motivated commitment, including through the use of AI agents that personally accompany employees.
Self-management and sustainability
In his workshop, André Meyer from FlowLabs showed how personal productivity (and therefore personal work motivation) can be increased with relatively little effort. Participants were invited to reflect on what a perfect working day might look like and to relate this to the reality they experience. The biggest differences between desire and reality represent levers that can be used to improve everyday working life.
Another of the 18 workshops dealt with the question of how supply chains can be transformed in a sustainable, resilient and future-oriented way. What can be carried out relatively easily for a food producer proves to be much more complex for a media company, for example, as this writer was able to find out for himself.
Buying instead of founding
The topic of "succession planning" was also well received. The Swiss umbrella organization for company succession was the "godfather" of this topic. Board member Carla Kaufmann pointed out that many companies are currently up for sale in order to ensure succession. "Many sale prices are below CHF 500,000 - so they are quite affordable," said Kaufmann, who runs her own brokerage platform for companies, Companymarket AG. "Buying instead of founding" is therefore an often underestimated success strategy for people who want to become entrepreneurs.
From SME to SME
The Zurich SME Innovation Day was once again organized this year by the location promotion department at the Office of Economic Affairs of the Canton of Zurich. Project manager Anita Martinecz Fehér was satisfied with the response to the event. Once again this year, the mix of topics proved to be a reflection of the diverse reality of SMEs and offered a low-threshold opportunity for a beneficial transfer of knowledge from SME to SME. Whether and when the Zurich SME Innovation Day will take place again in 2026 was not yet known at the time of going to press.
More information: https://kmu-innovation.zuerich/zuercher_kmu_innovationstag/
