Finalist

Entrepreneurial University of the Year Award

EHL Hospitality Business School

Finalist of the Entrepreneurial University of the Year Award

"EHL’s Innovative Entrepreneurship Ecosystem: Breeding the Hospitality Entrepreneurs of Tomorrow"


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Summary

EHL Hospitality Business School (founded in 1893 as Ecole hôtelière de Lausanne) launched its first incubator in 2009 to create a dedicated resource for the development of new concepts for the greater hospitality industry, F&B, Leisure and Travel- an initiative embraced by students, alumni and industry partners. In 2018, EHL signed an agreement with Ville de Lausanne to develop an innovation ecosystem near the EHL campus and house the ever-growing pool of ideas and innovators that were coming from the school and the industry. The Innovation Village has two core missions: to support entrepreneurship and to inspire and disrupt the food & hospitality industry.

On our three campuses in Switzerland and Singapore, we are committed to provide students and entrepreneurs with the tools, networks and experiences needed to thrive in business. EHL overarching Innovation strategy includes:

● The Innovation Village
● The Student Entrepreneurial Journey (SEJ)
● The EHL Innovation Foundation

With at least 1/3 of our students interested in an entrepreneurial career, and, following a two-year pilot, EHL launched in 2022 the SEJ which immerses undergraduate students in real-life entrepreneurship. To earn degree credits, students can pitch their business idea and intern in their own start-ups. By taking residence at the incubator of the EHL Innovation Village, they gain access to an entrepreneurship ecosystem and large network of like-minded innovators. The SEJ is a disruptive educational model allowing students to grow their business, pitch for funding through our EHL Innovation Foundation as well as hire EHL interns while studying in parallel.

Key People


Dr. Carole ACKERMANN
President of the Board of Directors; President of the EHL Board of Trustees
EHL Boards,  EHL Group



Prof Michel ROCHAT
CEO
Executive Committee,  EHL Group



Dr. Juan- Francisco PERELLON
CAO
Executive Committee,  EHL Group



Rémi WALBAUM
CIO
Executive Committee,  EHL Group



Winnaretta Zina SINGER
Head of Innovation Pole
Innovation Pole,  EHL Group



Dafina KOKOLLARI
Key Account Manager
Innovation Pole,  EHL Group



Dr. Nicole HINRICHS
Associate Professor
Academic Education,  EHL Group



Ian MILLAR
Manager of Institute of Business Creativity & Senior Lecturer
Academic Education,  EHL Group


Acknowledgements

We would like to thank:
• Members of the EHL Innovation Foundation
• Members of the EHL Incubator
• Donors of the EHL Innovation Foundation: Nestlé, Marriott International, Foundation Barrière, HotellerieSuisse
• Members of the Jury
• Our partner FIT (Fondation pour l’Innovation Technologique)
• La Ville de Lausanne

Images

EHL - Club des Entrepreneurs

EHL Classroom

Entrepreneurship @ EHL

EHL Innovation Village

Student Entrepreneurial Journey

EHL Entrepreneur Series

EHL Innovation Foundation & FIT

EHL Incubator Start-Ups Community

EHL Innovation in the news

EHL New Innovative Campus Facilities

PrivateDeal - A Personalized Pricing Solutions Start-up - Member of EHL Incubator

Beelong - Start-up Founded by EHL Alumni - Member of EHL Incubator

Entrepreneurship is fun!

EHL Incubator - An historical architecture with a modern twist

EHL - Club des Entrepreneurs

Beelong Founders & EHL Alumni - Charlotte de la Baume and Mathias Faigaux

IMPACT STORY

Impacting lifes

EHL’s entrepreneurship strategy has resulted in countless student success stories, business partnerships, and fully-fledged start-ups that have grown out of students’ time at EHL. One third of start-ups currently based at EHL’s Innovation Hub incubator were conceived by EHL students or alumni, including the start-up Beelong, which was founded in 2014 by EHL alumni Charlotte de La Baume and Mathias Faigaux, which has now grown in a team of 10 professionals. Beelong innovatively attributes an “eco-score” from A to E to food products, based on their provenance, packaging, manufacturing, seasonality and more, to help consumers, as well as 125 000 clients in Switzerland and beyond, to make more sustainable choices.

Charlotte said that EHL “is a cornerstone for tomorrow's hospitality industry - it's a real opportunity for a young company to grow within the incubator. Beelong benefits from EHL’s extensive network and valuable support.

We also have the opportunity to implement our indicator in the F&B outlets on-site – we couldn’t be any closer to those impacted by our tool!”

Indeed, EHL itself works with Beelong to advance the group sustainability mission: Contributing Beyond Education. As a result of the collaboration, EHL has stopped buying endangered species of seafood, and 95% of ingredients used by the bakery are locally sourced.

Our educational model enhances excellence and nurtures a virtuous circle in which what we teach to students gets reinvested into our operations – it acts as a form of dividend that ultimately benefits all stakeholders of our university and beyond.

LEARNINGS

Lessons learned

Our entrepreneurship journey has so far taught us some truly valuable lessons, and we’ve had to be agile and adaptable in the face of the unexpected.

--- Attracting the best of product-driven start-ups ---
A considerable surprise during our journey has been the large number of solution- and product-driven tech start-ups that we attracted from outside of the EHL ecosystem, such as fast-growing hospitality tech start-up PrivateDeal. While we had anticipated interest mostly from business-driven start-ups founded by students and alumni, we’re also attractive to a large number of solution-driven businesses who are now firmly part of our entrepreneurial ecosystem.

As a result, we play host to a community of entrepreneurs with diverse networks and operations which enrich the community, provide exciting collaboration opportunities with our students and boost the local economy.

--- Feeding a growing appetite for student entrepreneurship ---
Secondly, although we anticipated success among students, we have been delighted by the sheer number of students who are enthusiastic about founding their own start-up, interning in other start-ups in the incubator (including their peers’ start-ups) and carrying out real-life consulting projects for start-ups in our incubator. The resulting community of students and external entrepreneurs has been highly collaborative and mutually enriching.

EHL Head of Innovation Zina Singer advises those wishing to undertake a similar path to try things out and to truly consolidate what they’re setting up before deploying all their forces, as well as to not underestimate connections with those in your ecosystem beyond your own organisation.

FUTURE PLANS

What's coming?

As we expand and develop, we are committed to entrepreneurship remaining a vital part of our pedagogical and strategic mission across the EHL Group to serve an engaged student body as well as a rich community of entrepreneurs, investors and experts.

Going forwards and ahead of our next exciting steps, we will ensure that what we have so far built is robust and stable by continually monitoring our service level and working with our students and 30+ members to help them realise their full potential.

Our increasing visibility and impact mean an anticipated rise in the volume of interest in our entrepreneurship ecosystem, and so we are already consolidating our existing infrastructure before our community enters the next phase of its development.

Our next steps include moving increasingly towards the model of an accelerator – rather than uniquely that of an incubator – so that we can help fast-growing start-ups to continue accelerating their growth with us, such as hospitality start-up PrivateDeal, an intelligent hotel booking system, and Smeetz, an AI dynamic pricing start-up for events and businesses which helps maximize sales.

Ahead of the next phase of new partners which will enrich the existing community and facilitate more and more innovation, it is important for us to manage the success of what we’ve created while keeping the service level high. Concretely, this means streamlining our services to make them more professional and less tailor-made, without compromising on the high level of service that we offer.

KEY STATISTICS

33%

EHL students interested in an Entrepreneurial Career

36%

final year students undertake the Entrepreneurship Elective taught at EHL incubator

31

members are currently at the incubator

520%

growth in members at the incubator in 3 years (5 in 2019 - 31 in 2022)

44

start-ups have been affiliated to the incubator (including 4 launched by students)

186

Students who embraced the EHL Entrepreneurial Ecosystem and Student Entrepreneurial Journey at the Incubator

3000

Participants in EHL Entrepreneurial events

13

Jury Members

590 000 CHF

loans attributed to start-ups through the FIT Food & Hospitality by EHL

Triple E Awards

The Triple E Awards are a global recognition of efforts toward the quest for entrepreneurship and engagement in higher education. It is the first award to focus specifically on different dimensions of the universities' third mission. Implemented regionally, the Triple E Awards aim to foster change in universities and to emphasize their role in their communities and ecosystems.

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