2019 summit

Entrepreneurship to serve the common good

8th edition - 2019

Overview

The Zermatt Summit 2019 took as its starting point the observation that breakthrough innovations often emerge from the periphery: from small enterprises or communities, from less-developed parts of the world, or through a combination of traditional knowledge and cutting-edge technology.

Christopher Wasserman convened the first Zermatt Summit in 2010 to promote the role of business in advancing the common good. Organizing the summit in Zermatt was a conscious choice: the village lies at the end of a deep mountain valley and can only be reached by train. In other words, it is at the periphery, the very place where innovation is born and matures until it is ready to change the world.

Participants in the 2019 joined speakers and panelists in discussing many inspiring examples of “peripheral innovation”, including revolutionary technologies to harness wind energy, address plastic pollution in the oceans, reduce food waste, empower farmers in developing countries to sell directly to consumers, support entrepreneurship and revive local economies in remote communities.

Translating ideas into action

For the last 20 years, it has organized hundreds of concerts annually in hospitals, old-age care homes, institutions for the disabled, prisons and refugee camps.
The Zermatt Summit 2019 highlighted four companies that are pioneering cutting-edge projects in the area of sustainable energy and food production, and provided financial support to them through grants of CHF 25,000.

Partners

Sponsor partners
Network partners
Media partners