How do we live, eat and get around in a climate-friendly way, in a way that works for everyone? How do our cities stay liveable as summers get hotter? And how do young and old live well together?

Questions like these call for two things: new ideas, and ways to bring good approaches to scale. Much already exists, from proven technology to successful pilot projects. What often stands in the way of spreading them is something else: nobody is responsible, processes don’t fit together, financing models are missing. Alongside products and services, we therefore often need new roles, new forms of collaboration and new rules of the game. All of this together is what we call social innovation.

Get involved

The Innovation Booster Future Urban Society supports both: bold new approaches being tested for the first time, and initiatives that take proven solutions out of the niche. Bring your idea and develop it further together with cities, municipalities, experts and other innovators. You and your team receive financial support and methodological guidance.

More about the basic idea of Innosuisse's Innovation Booster →

We’ve put together a publication covering two years of social innovation in and for Switzerland: teams, learnings, and a wealth of knowledge across almost 80 pages. Enjoy browsing.

In the first two years, we received over 100 submissions and funded 24 of them.

Discover all ideas

Climate crisis, destruction of biodiversity, energy crisis — we live in a world of multiple crises. Mastering these challenges requires radically new ideas and approaches, both technologically and socially.

Whether it's sharing, repairing, or DIY, many innovative approaches, projects, and ideas for climate-friendly living in urban areas remain small. This isn't because they fundamentally don't work, but because they often touch on various aspects of our lives, making it difficult to change our habits and involve diverse stakeholders in the implementation. The stabilization or distribution of integrative approaches works differently than purely commercial offerings. Therefore, we want to strengthen and scale eco-social innovations in our Innovation Booster to establish them in the mainstream.

The major challenges of our time can only be overcome through collaboration between people from different sectors of society. That is why the booster takes an open innovation approach: we bring together key actors from civil society, science and business with cities and municipalities, including Zurich, Basel, Lausanne and Lugano. Together, we explore systemic problems and develop radical ideas for sustainable solutions.

To enable and accelerate innovation, we connect cities and administrations with eco-social innovators as well as stakeholders from the private sector and science. We can financially support ideas that arise and/or are developed through the Innovation Booster Program with methodological and financial support, including vouchers for expert advice and coaching. In this way, we make it possible for promising innovations to be further developed and tested in urban areas of Switzerland. In addition, together with our partners, we are working to ensure that further implementation of the innovations after the booster is likely.
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Project ideas can be submitted until mid-March 2027 to secure financial support of up to CHF 22,500 and methodological support as well as valuable contacts for further steps.

Meso Innovation Alliance
‍The Booster Future Urban Society is supported by Meso as a Leading House and is characterized by the expertise of the following organizations:

Urban innovation is only possible through strong partnerships with cities and municipalities. That is why we are particularly proud of our implementation partnerships:

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