Innovation Catalyst - Coach, Manager, Trainer and Workshop Facilitator in Zürich

60%-100%, temporary

At the ETH Student Project House (SPH) we inspire and empower students to cultivate a mindset of makers and innovators. We believe that by exploring their ideas and developing their own projects, students gain valuable hands-on experience and learn important skills for their future. This is why we’ve created an ecosystem where students (Bachelor, Master, and Doctoral students) are encouraged to ideate, build prototypes, and test and refine them.

Our interdisciplinary team of ten people provides students that want to pursue extracurricular projects of various types and scales with a comprehensive range of support. On the one hand, we design and manage facilities like co-working, ideation, and event spaces as well as a makerspace that gives students access to the tools and equipment they need to prototype. On the other, we support project teams with personal coaching, methods, and a diverse expert network. We want to accompany students on their journey by inspiring them to get started, to seek diverse views, to explore the real need behind an idea, to work as a team, to think big, to fail, to pivot, and to keep overcoming obstacles they encounter on the way.

As we’re scaling up and extending our offer, we’re now looking for two new team members. Read on to see if one of them might be you!

You’ll work in one of the most inspiring spaces at ETH Zürich, surrounded by 3D-printers, whiteboards, ideation equipment, self-designed furniture, and plants.

• We’re currently based at a pilot location on the ETH Hönggerberg campus. Next year, we’ll also be opening a newly renovated five-story building in the ETH Centre.
• We work in the same open space as our project teams and meet with everyone at eye level. The individuals we work with are from a diverse range of backgrounds and study disciplines, which is why we communicate in English. As the projects we support are extracurricular, most of our events and training offers take place in the late afternoon, in the evening, and occasionally at weekends.
• We take an agile approach to conceptualizing and delivering our offer and allocate our capacity flexibly to the most important tasks. As teamwork is one of our key values, we always involve multiple people when tackling big challenges.
• We offer a limited contract for two years with the perspective of extension.

You’ll be part of the project support team and responsible for the following tasks:

• Conceptualize and Manage. You’ll develop and manage a range of service offers for students. You’ll make sure that the corresponding processes run smoothly and bring clarity to all stakeholders (e.g.: grow and oversee our network of sector experts).
• Coach. You’ll coach early-stage projects from diverse backgrounds. You’ll help them to reflect, ask insightful questions, and pin down their next steps, without taking on a leadership role. 
• Facilitate. You’ll facilitate workshops on methods and skills (e.g. ideation, need-finding) and moderate expert training (e.g. business models, patents).

• Train. You’ll train student coaches on the maker and innovator mindset, agile methodology, facilitation of design thinking workshops, moderation, and team dynamics.

We need your energy and drive to implement new service offers and to motivate our project teams. 

• You have experience in starting and implementing your own projects (start-up, competition, innovation project, etc.). You’ve failed, learned from it, and tried again.
• You bring in methodological skills that are valuable to guide early-stage projects (agile development, design thinking, project management, product development, lean startup, business models, team dynamics, etc.).
• You have good management skills and can make sure that our service offers and processes are streamlined, clear, and can be scaled to meet the needs of 100+ project teams within the next year.
• You enjoy working with people and you’re passionate about supporting them to grow their maker and innovator mindset.
• You feel comfortable speaking in front of a group and running workshops. 
• Ideally, you have experience in supporting and coaching early-stage projects. 
• Based on feedback from our project teams, we’d be particularly interested in hearing from individuals with business and software skills, but this is not a hard requirement.

ETH Zurich is one of the world’s leading universities specialising in science and technology. We are renowned for our excellent education, cutting-edge fundamental research and direct transfer of new knowledge into society. Over 30,000 people from more than 120 countries find our university to be a place that promotes independent thinking and an environment that inspires excellence. Located in the heart of Europe, yet forging connections all over the world, we work together to develop solutions for the global challenges of today and tomorrow.