Innovation Catalyst

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 twelve 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.

As we’re scaling up and extending our offer, we’re now looking for an Innovation Catalyst.

Application Deadline: please apply before Monday, 10th of February, 9am.  

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 at ETH Zentrum and at ETH Hönggerberg campus.
• 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. As the projects we support are extracurricular, most of our events and training offers take place in the late afternoon, in the evening, and occasionally at 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 or joining a university competition. Currently we support more than 500 coached projects per year.

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 and manage a range of service offers for students. You’ll make sure that the corresponding processes run smoothly and bring clarity to all stakeholders (e.g. setting up a method toolbox, matchmaking of existing projects with students that want to join a project, etc.).
• Facilitating: You’ll facilitate workshops (e.g. ideation, need-finding), moderate expert training (e.g. business models, patents), or host peer-to-peer events.

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, competition, innovation project, etc.). You’ve failed, learned from it, and tried again. 
• You bring in methodological skills that are valuable to guide early-stage projects in the field of innovation (agile development, design thinking, project management, product development, lean startup, business models, team dynamics, etc.).
• You have at least 2 years work experience in the field of innovation, coaching, own startup, or similar. 
• You have good management skills and can make sure that our service offers and processes are streamlined, clear, and can be further scaled to meet the needs of 500+ 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 and running workshops.
• Ideally, you have experience in supporting and coaching early-stage projects.
• Ideally, you have experience in building and launching software or hardware products and you are familiar with the Swiss startup ecosystem (funding, VC, startup programs, etc…).

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.

We offer a 1-year contract with the possibility to prolong the contract. Fixed-term contracts are the standard at ETH, however the position is financially secured in the long run.

ETH Zurich is a family-friendly employer with excellent working conditions. You can look forward to an exciting working environment, cultural diversity and attractive offers and benefits. We believe in personal growth. For that we do regular team feedback sessions and value everyone's opinion. We find the best solutions through diversity.