Beth Krasna Gives Inspiring Talk on Swiss Education and Innovation
Geneva, February 25, 2020: The American International Club (AIC) hosted an enlightening presentation by Mrs. Beth Krasna on the Swiss education system, creativity, entrepreneurship, and the beneficial outcome of these activities. Mrs. Krasna is the Vice-President of Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology overseeing our country's finest institutes such as ETH Zurich and EPFL, as well as leading Swiss research institutes.
Mrs. Krasna gave a historical perspective of past industrial revolutions up to today: 1) Industrial Steam Engine that took us from farmer to factory worker, 2) Electricity to Optimization that led us to assembly-line production, 3) Information and IT that led us from outcome to measurement, to the current 4) Scarcity and Abundance revolution of information, data, knowledge sources, social networks, and the interactions between them all. China’s pervasive use of facial recognition to exponentially increase knowledge of its population exemplifies this current revolution.
She said that our education system should foster innovative teaching. ETH Zurich has Innovation & Entrepreneurship Lab and ETH Entrepreneurship Club (host of the In-Cube Challenge). EPFL has “Innogrants” and “Le Garage” to foster innovative thinking. Innovation pays. An ETH Impact study showed that one Swiss Franc spent on innovative education led to a 5x increase in value; and one position in the ETH domain created four jobs in the Swiss economy. The study further showed that 659 spin-offs created in 2016 have since led to CHF 1.6 billion in revenues.
She noted, however, that only 25% of Swiss start-up CEOs are pure Swiss. The problem lies in the traditional Swiss education program that encourages children to follow instructions and work within established systems, as opposed to leading and taking risks.
The world, however, is getting more dynamic and unpredictable, where creativity as well as literacy need to be taught to our kids. Mrs. Krasna created a Startup Kids program to help reverse this trend. This program teaches entrepreneurship to kids, with the prime age being 9-to-11 years of age. Children learn about trial and error. They are encouraged to embrace failure and learn from it, instead of being afraid to fail. The kids are taught to poll other people’s views before making decisions. She is hoping to shame the Swiss public-school system into adding Entrepreneurship into the curriculum.
Mrs. Krasna closed by stating her goal is have economic progress where no one is left behind.