As a result of this project, we helped create an innovation ecosystem around scientific activities and worked to link science with the economy.

The mission of Science Valais is to defend and promote professional, scientific activities both inside and outside the canton. We wanted to provide networking opportunities to key scientific actors and allow their work to gain greater visibility to the general public, whether that be training, research, development, or disseminating knowledge. The promotion activities aimed to encourage the next generation of scientists to develop further their interests and understanding of science among the general public. We also wanted to position Valais as an ecosystem favorable to research. 

The Science Valais team organizes its activities around three axes: Science promotion and visibility, networking, and shared tools. In terms of the communication strategy, we worked diligently to bring together individuals with marketing, scientific communication skills, and academic expertise to make the network available in Valais, Switzerland, and abroad. We ensured that we made the platform multilingual to communicate in French, German, and English. We started by creating a platform that also doubled as a communication agency for scientific institutions. By providing different actors with practical and efficient support for disseminating scientific knowledge, we helped them disperse their scientific research and discoveries, event design, and implementation while working with a centralized plan to promote local scientific events like science cafes.

We worked virtually to promote scientific news, federate offers of training courses, conferences, and moderated the platform through the entire process; we also created our events to increase visibility to existing circumstances. We worked to create a community of returning users by including portraits of the institutions, highlights of the month’s institutions, general news and job offers in our newsletters, a platform for sharing infrastructures, and resources for research funding. The Science Valais community has been growing steadily since the launch.