A great taste of India in Switzerland
As part of the ongoing collaboration between the FHNW School of Business and partner institutions in India, a seminar was held from 13 – 17 February 2023 in Olten, Switzerland. The seminar was a valuable opportunity for students, academics, and business leaders from both Switzerland and India to come together and discuss important issues related to sustainable development and digital thinking.
Prof. Dr. Regula Altmann-Jöhl, director of the School of Business introduced today’s five international student projects: Insight China, Focus India, connectUS, exploreASEAN and Holatam launched one by once since 2001. The aim of these projects is to learn about social, economic, and political landscapes of major partners by visiting companies and organisations on site. Mr. Marc Blaser, CEO of Blaser Swisslube, held a presentation about how to remain competitive in a global environment. He emphasized the importance of trust, empathy, respect and recognition, thinking and intuition.
During this enriching week we had various speakers that came to our campus in Olten or met us online. We had the honor to greet Mr. Kaushlendra Kumar and Cd’A Deepak Bansal from the Embassy of India in Switzerland. Mr. Cd’A Bansal gave a speech describing India’s top priorities for the future and how they plan to achieve them. India is planning to reduce barriers to trade and launch new projects to make more national industries open to public investments. The overhaul of national education policy aims to make education more accessible, affordable, and effective. The many insights they shared with us were valuable and the delegation was able to gain much knowledge from them. In addition to welcoming speakers, we were invited by Endress+Hauser to visit their company in Reinach and get an understanding for how they manufacture their products. We are already looking forward to visiting them in Aurangabad, India.
The seminar also included interactive workshop on topics such as design thinking, sustainable finance, and cross-cultural communication. The workshop provided participants with practical skills and tools for promoting social entrepreneurship and sustainable development in their own contexts.
One workshop highlight was conducted by Accenture, one of the world’s leading consulting firms and loyal partner of Focus India. Accenture provides technology and outsourcing services to a variety of industries. How can we use digitization to open up business prospects for locals or those living in rural regions without having to relocate? was the focus of a workshop we held to test this concept. The focus was in keeping it simple, failing fast, and iterating quickly to refine the best solutions. We were happy to welcome Accenture’s Samira Märki, former Focus India project team member.
Overall, the seminar was a valuable opportunity for students, academics, and business leaders to learn from each other and collaborate on important issues related to sustainable development and social entrepreneurship. The seminar demonstrated the importance of international collaboration and interdisciplinary approaches in addressing global challenges and provided participants with practical skills and tools for promoting sustainability and social entrepreneurship in their own contexts.
A big thank you goes to all our partners: Endress+Hauser, Accenture, Blaser Swisslube, BBC Group and Convinus. Our in-kind supporters: Ricola, Emmi, Lipton, Landi, RedBull Organics and Aggarwal made sure that we had enough food and beverage during the seminar, thank you!
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