nextrends Asia: Keeping up with education, research and innovation in Asia

Over the past two decades, the Asian economy has witnessed a tremendous upsurge in trade, capital, demand, productivity, talent and innovation. While Asia’s economic growth is known and acknowledged around the world, the trends and developments in education, research and innovation in Asia, and Switzerland’s engagement with Asia, is less known.

The Swiss network in Asia introduced an online platform, nextrends Asia, to highlight education, research and innovation trends from Australia, China, India, Israel, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan, and to raise the visibility of Swiss-Asian partnerships, and inspire further collaborations. A plethora of writers and subject matters experts from the Swiss global network in Asia contribute to the platform with their insights.

swissnex India took the lead in conceptualising the platform, defining its editorial goals and guidelines and bringing together the key players of the Swiss network in Asia as contributors. Additionally, we facilitated partnership with the two Swiss Leading Houses responsible for bilateral S&T collaboration with Asia - ETH Zurich and ZHAW - as well as with the think tank, Asia Society, for content and insight collaboration.

Since its inception, the platform has published 40+ articles (videos and podcasts) on topics such as health technologies, renewable energy, space innovation, smart cities, digital governance, drones, artificial intelligence, etc., and is consistently gaining a wider audience in Switzerland.

To further engage our audience with insights on Asia’s growth and the potential for Swiss-Asian collaborations, a webinar on the ‘Cultures of Innovation in Switzerland and Asia’ was organised by the Embassy of Switzerland in India in October 2020. Experts from Switzerland, China, India, Japan and Singapore shared their knowledge on a variety of topics such as the history of innovation in their respective countries, policies & regulations and the strengthening of academia-industry connect.

Going forward, nextrends Asia will continue its efforts to establish itself as the go-to platform for insights on Asia’s emergent trends and developments. It would do by engaging Swiss readers through newer content formats such as V-logs, photo features and podcasts and furthering content collaborations with Swiss publications. Through a more diversified content portfolio and a wider pool of subject matter experts, nextrends Asia will continue to strengthen Swiss-Asian partnerships in education, research and innovation.