Innovation Catalyst
Zurich, Switzerland
Innovation Catalyst
60%-80%, Zurich, fixed-term
At the ETH Student Project House (SPH) we inspire and empower students to cultivate a mindset of makers and innovators. We believe that by exploring their ideas and developing their own projects, students gain valuable hands-on experience and learn important skills for their future. This is why we’ve created an ecosystem where students (Bachelor, Master, and Doctoral students) are encouraged to explore, ideate, build prototypes, test and refine them.
Our interdisciplinary team of thirty people provides students who want to pursue extracurricular projects of various types and scales with a comprehensive range of support. On the one hand, we design and manage facilities like co-working, ideation, and event spaces as well as a makerspace that gives students access to the tools and equipment they need to prototype. On the other hand, we support project teams with personal coaching, workshops, and a diverse expert network. We want to accompany students on their journey by inspiring them to get started, to seek diverse views, to explore the real need behind an idea, to work as a team, to think big, to fail, to pivot, and to keep overcoming obstacles they encounter on the way.
We’re now looking for an Innovation Catalyst to join our team on a fixed-term maternity cover (for 5-6 months), with the possibility of extension.
Application Deadline: please apply before Friday, 17th of July, 9am.
Project background
You’ll work in one of the most inspiring spaces at ETH Zürich, surrounded by 3D-printers, whiteboards, ideation equipment, self-designed furniture, and plants.
- We’re located on the ETH Zentrum and ETH Hönggerberg campuses.
- We work in the same open space as our project teams and meet with everyone at eye level. The individuals we work with are from a diverse range of backgrounds and study disciplines, which is why we communicate in English.
- While a majority of our service offers run during the day, the projects we support are extracurricular, so most of our events and workshops take place in the late afternoon, sometimes in the evening, and occasionally on weekends.
- We take an agile approach to conceptualizing and delivering our offer and allocate our capacity flexibly to the most important tasks. Hereby, teamwork is one of our key values.
- You’ll be part of the project support subteam of 6 people that supports the “coached projects”. These projects are very diverse regarding topic, stage, intensity and goal. Some of them are entrepreneurial, others have another focus such as founding an NGO, a club, or participating a university competition. Currently we support more than 600 coached projects per year.
Job description
Together, we support the projects, in the fields of innovation and personal growth. In the role of an Innovation Catalyst, you are responsible for the following tasks:
- Coaching: You’ll coach early-stage projects from diverse backgrounds. You’ll help them to reflect, ask insightful questions, and support them to pin down their next steps, without taking on a leadership role.
- Conceptualizing and Managing: You’ll develop learning journeys and service offers to support our students from start to finish. This includes conceptualizing, testing, and building end-to-end processes, as well as documenting, running, continuously improving, and scaling these offers.
- Facilitating: You’ll facilitate workshops (e.g. ideation, need-finding), moderate expert training (e.g. business models, patents), or host peer-to-peer events.
- Driving: You'll lead key initiatives aligned with SPH's mission, including stakeholder management
In the Project Support team, we practice collegial management, sharing both leadership and accountability.
Profile
We need your energy and drive to support our projects, scale, and develop our offer to the next level.
- You have experience in starting and implementing your own projects (start-up, entrepreneurship project, innovation project, etc.). You’ve failed, learned from it, and tried again.
- You bring in methodological skills that are valuable to coach early-stage projects in the field of innovation (prototyping, agile development, design thinking, project management, product development, lean startup, business models, team dynamics, etc.).
- You have strong facilitation and management skills and can ensure that our services and processes are streamlined, clear, and scalable to meet the needs of 600+ project teams per year.
- You enjoy working with people and you’re passionate about supporting them to grow their maker and innovator mindset.
- You feel comfortable speaking in front of a group of students, or important stakeholders, and running workshops.
- You have a master's degree or an equivalent qualification from a recognized higher-level institution.
- You have at least 3 years work experience in the field of innovation, coaching, own startup, or similar.
- Ideally, you either have experience in engineering, expertise in sustainable product development, or subject matter expertise in an area such as AI, robotics, digital technologies, life sciences, or another field relevant to ETH students.
A note: research indicates that women and individuals from marginalized groups tend to apply only when they meet all of the criteria. If you believe you’re qualified, but don’t necessarily check every box, please submit an application.
Workplace
Workplace
We offer
- Your job with impact: Become part of ETH Zurich, which not only supports your professional development, but also actively contributes to positive change in society
- You can expect numerous benefits, such as public transport season tickets and car sharing, a wide range of sports offered by the ASVZ, childcare and attractive pension benefits
We value diversity and sustainability
Curious? So are we.
We look forward to receiving your online application with the following documents:
- Cover letter
- CV
- We’d love to get to know you! Please record a 1-2 min video clip introducing yourself and telling us what you want to bring to the team. We're not looking for perfect video production skills - just use your smartphone, be yourself, and don't worry about editing the clip. We want to meet the real you! Upload the video on a platform of your choice (Dropbox, YouTube, Vimeo, Google Drive, ...) and include the URL link in your cover letter.
Application Deadline: please apply before Friday, 17th of July, 9am.
Please note that we can only accept applications submitted through the ETH online application portal and applications that contain all required documents (cover letter, video, CV). Applications via email or by post will not be considered.
Further information about the ETH Student Project House can be found on our website, on Instagram, and on LinkedIn.