The Innovation Switch

Project Summary

The objective is to expose everyone to the possibility to innovate in a safe, supportive, and inspirational environment. The Innovation Switch, which comes in the form of courses, a club, immersive projects, partnerships, and experiential activities, is supporting the evolution of the school’s culture to meet the world’s challenges. It formally shapes with metrics and processes what has intuitively been the school’s values since its creation 40 years ago: innovation and entrepreneurship.

How is the project improving pedagogical practices?

The Innovation Switch supports existing pedagogical practices and enhances the global teaching practices with the perspective of innovation. Recent research has emphasized the major changes in teaching in recent years. Already Barber (2013) stated in his eloquent title, “An Avalanche is Coming: Higher Education and the Revolution Ahead”, that it is a necessary disruptive issue and he foresaw that the academic landscape will have to deal with massive changes that he names an ‘avalanche of disruptions’ in higher education.

If we focus on our students, a major advantage of Digital Natives is their willingness to take responsibilities and to be ready to go the extra mile if the subject and the learning experience is relevant to them, in other words, if it is worth the effort. They are already well educated, imaginative, collaborative and confident; the main point is to get them to focus and to trigger motivation (Barber 2013).

The Innovation Switch fully aims to create more engagement within César Ritz Colleges’ existing practice.

How is the project improving higher education?

We have at heart to globally create a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship; the pillars of the school’s vision. Global engagement is what drives us –  ensuring that the Innovation Switch reaches everyone. It is not about creating an innovation department in charge of innovation, but to establish a trend, vision, and direction to change the school culture in the long run.

In order to create the Innovation Switch, we have looked into The World Economic Forum (2020) report, “Schools of the Future Defining New Models of Education for the Fourth Industrial Revolution”, that has identified 8 critical characteristics in learning: “global citizenship skills, innovation and creativity skills, technology skills, interpersonal skills, personalized and self-paced learning, accessible and inclusive learning, problem-based and collaborative learning, and lifelong and student-driven learning”.

Based on these characteristics, the Innovation Switch aims at providing a better higher education to tackle the challenge of a world that does not yet exist.

Participants and reach

Each of the 250 students on campus takes part in the one or more aspects of the Innovation Switch (courses, the club, inspirational field trip, animal care, partnership, or Innovation Week.)

All lecturers attend Innovation Week, peer reviews, and best practice meetings.

The Innovation Switch is deployed at Le Bouveret campus of César Ritz Colleges at this point. With 51 nationalities represented among our 250 students, the Innovation Switch has an international reach of 51 out of the 195 United Nations countries.