Gritec
A healthy life balance
I need challenges and the opportunity to contribute.
David Meier
With the paraglider laid out on the grass and the lines in your hands, you step forwards until you feel the tension. You run towards the valley, leaving the lines and your fear behind. And take flight. “An incredible feeling,” says David Meier, speaking of tranquillity, freedom and a sense of wonder. “When you’re flying, you’re in another world.” But another world can only exist alongside this one. And in this world, David Meier is a husband, father and innovator.
A glass-walled meeting room sits atop technology company Gritec, surrounded by Graubünden’s mountain panorama. Here, David Meier looks for connections between his employer’s expertise and that of its clients. Innovation, he says, only happens when you identify and combine the right methods, techniques and tools. As Head of Innovation, he leads creative workshops and guides people’s thinking towards that goal. The work is as varied as it is collaborative. “Every project brings something new.” One day he is thinking about medical technology, the next industrial automation or generators. Although he considers his task complete once the client leaves the meeting room down in the valley, the greatest reward is seeing the ideas developed there actually put into practice.
More about Gritec
With the paraglider laid out on the grass and the lines in your hands, you step forwards until you feel the tension. You run towards the valley, leaving the lines and your fear behind. And take flight. “An incredible feeling,” says David Meier, speaking of tranquillity, freedom and a sense of wonder. “When you’re flying, you’re in another world.” But another world can only exist alongside this one. And in this world, David Meier is a husband, father and innovator.
A glass-walled meeting room sits atop technology company Gritec, surrounded by Graubünden’s mountain panorama. Here, David Meier looks for connections between his employer’s expertise and that of its clients. Innovation, he says, only happens when you identify and combine the right methods, techniques and tools. As Head of Innovation, he leads creative workshops and guides people’s thinking towards that goal. The work is as varied as it is collaborative. “Every project brings something new.” One day he is thinking about medical technology, the next industrial automation or generators. Although he considers his task complete once the client leaves the meeting room down in the valley, the greatest reward is seeing the ideas developed there actually put into practice.
David Meier joined Gritec seven years ago, taking his first job after graduation. A long time, considering the 34-year-old’s life so far: born in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; a childhood in the Zurich Oberland; four years in Indonesia; schooling in Singapore, Pfäffikon and Basel; university in Zurich; and an internship in Germany. “Home is wherever I am,” he says. “At the moment, that’s Graubünden.” The variety of his career has helped him feel at home too. He joined Gritec as a development engineer, became part of the management team after two years and now heads up innovation. “I need challenges and the opportunity to contribute.”
He came to Graubünden for the job. He also stayed because he met his partner here. Their first daughter was born two years ago, and their second arrived in July 2020. Every Wednesday, David Meier stays at home in Igis, just a few kilometres from work. He deliberately makes time for his family. “That matters more to me than simply pursuing a career.” Only flying gets a little less time than he would like alongside work and family. He needs at least half a day to enjoy the experience of being out in nature to the full.
David Meier first attempted to take off in a paraglider in 2006, above Elm in the canton of Glarus, on the second day of his training. There was snow on the ground, and the landing site was out of sight. “An unsettling feeling,” he recalls. He started running, ready to take off, then had to abort. Yet he does not see it as a defeat. You have to be able to weigh up risks and assess your own abilities, he says. “In flying, just as at work.” That day, he went back up the mountain, laid out the wing again, took the lines in his hands once more and took flight. If you want to create and achieve something new, you also need to know how to fail.
