Optotune – vom Start-up zum globalen Player

Op­to­tune – from Start-Up to Global Player

A stu­dent at ETH Zürich de­vel­ops an in­no­v­a­tive lens. Now he is about to con­quer the global mar­kets.

Manuel As­chwan­den had al­ways dreamed of some­day cre­at­ing some­thing big. Now 34, this na­tive of Can­ton Uri stud­ied elec­tri­cal en­gi­neer­ing at the ETH Zürich and after com­plet­ing his doc­tor­ate in 2008 founded the com­pany Op­to­tune with David Niederer and Mark Ven­tura. As a start-up  in the field of adap­tive op­tics they de­vel­oped an elec­tron­i­cally tun­able lens. The focal length of the elec­tri­cal lens is tuned by ap­ply­ing a con­trol cur­rent, thus re­plac­ing a com­plex mech­a­nism that con­sist of sev­eral hard lenses. Op­to­tune quickly ven­tured abroad and today ex­ports 97 per­cent of their prod­uct, mainly to the USA. Pro­duc­tion takes place in Di­etikon, where the com­pany is based. It has 50 em­ploy­ees, two thirds of them Swiss. The pro­duc­tion vol­ume may soon reach the mil­lion-units-range. The Op­to­tune lens ap­pears pre­des­tined for cell phone cam­eras, but is al­ready used in med­ical de­vices, in­dus­try sys­tems and nu­mer­ous other ap­pli­ca­tions. Manuel As­chwan­den's dream of build­ing a suc­cess­ful global op­ti­cal en­ter­prise is about to come true.


More about the com­pany at: www.​optotune.​com

Lead­ing Ed­u­ca­tion and Re­search Lo­ca­tion

forschungWith grants, ad­vice from in­dus­try ex­perts, and the op­por­tu­nity to oc­cupy of­fices and lab space free of charge at the re­search in­sti­tute Empa, ETH Zürich pro­vided sig­nif­i­cant sup­port to­ward the launch of Op­to­tune. Today the tech­nol­ogy com­pany re­lies over­whelm­ingly (65%) on the know-how of its highly ed­u­cated em­ploy­ees from Switzer­land.

 

 

Free En­ter­prise

 

unternehmertumThanks to a busi­ness friendly en­vi­ron­ment in Switzer­land, Op­to­tune is free to con­cen­trate re­search, de­vel­op­ment, pro­duc­tion, and the mar­ket­ing of its prod­ucts, in­stead of wast­ing time on end­less red tape. And if the com­pany ever needs to bring highly skilled em­ploy­ees from abroad to its head­quar­ters in Di­etikon, it can do so with a min­i­mum of bu­reau­cracy thanks to the bi­lat­eral treaties.