The Silicon Valley for People: Using Insights from Global Tech Hubs to Build a Human-Centered Innovation Ecosystem

Innovative project idea

How did Silicon Valley become the global center for technology and innovation that it is known as today? And could we apply insights from California and other tech hubs around the world (e.g., Bangalore, Beijing) to transform Zurich into the “People Valley,” the first global hub for innovation on people issues? In this intensive course, participants explore the history and visualize information about global hubs, develop their own novel recommendations in groups for how to build a people-focused innovation cluster in Zurich, and pitch these ideas to a panel of experts in academia and industry.

Benefits for students and teaching at UZH

Students will benefit from the project because it will allow them to 1. engage in self-directed learning, 2. make real-world contributions (e.g., visualizations, new ideas), and 3. develop and receive feedback on their own ideas from professors, practitioners, and other experts at the end of the course. Teaching will benefit from the project because after it concludes, the instructors will create a toolkit for other instructors with detailed information about how to create a similar project-based class on other topics and that describes learnings from the courses that were conducted.