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Switzerland sets innovation context, not direction
Switzerland’s distributed approach to democracy is reflected in its attitude to innovation policy, which puts decisions about collaboration and technology transfer in the hands of the academics and industrialists doing the work.
By Mauro Dell’Ambrogio, secretary of state for education and research, Switzerland
Mauro Dell’Ambrogio has a doctorate in law from the University of Zurich. After passing his bar exam he held a number of public offices in Ticino canton from 1979 to 1999, including judge, chief of the cantonal police, secretary-general for education and culture, project manager for the creation of the University of Lugano (USI), and secretary-general of the USI.
After four years heading a group of private clinics, he was made director of the University of Applied Sciences of Southern Switzerland (SUPSI) in 2003. He has been mayor of Giubiasco, a member of the Ticino cantonal parliament, and chairman of the Ticino electricity works.
Mauro Dell’Ambrogio took up the post of state secretary for education and research in January 2008.
Switzerland has a long tradition of not prioritising its research agenda, instead relying on the entrepreneurial spirit of individual researchers or group leaders. The productivity of our university researchers, expressed by the number of scientific publications produced per dollar invested, is among the highest in the world.
One of the key themes of EIRMA’s annual conference this year is how industry can relate to Big Science. Switzerland does not possess an aerospace or nuclear industry, the industries most often accompanied by government-backed Big Science. Instead Switzerland has developed in the opposite direction. For us, the question is not how industry can relate to Big Science, but how science can relate to Big Industry.
During the creation of modern Switzerland in the mid-nineteenth century, it was decided that many academic fires were preferable to one big bonfire, that a dozen cantonal universities were preferable to one big national university. However a single federal polytechnic institute (ETH - the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) was established in Zurich, to provide the country with the engineers it needed. A second such federal polytechnic institute was established a century later in Lausanne (EPFL). And for 100 years, the exchange between the Swiss pharmaceutical and machine industries and ETH in Zurich has been symbiotic. Most graduate students would work in these industries: professors would become industrial lab chiefs; industrial lab chiefs would become professors. No technology transfer office was needed, because the brains naturally circulated between ETH Zurich, Brown Boveri, Sulzer, Ciba, Geigy, Hoffman-La Roche and others.
Today, the situation is more complex. R&D has become international. Our research-driven pharmaceutical industry is no longer relying on one nation or university and is doing research wherever it can find the best conditions and brains. Swiss companies are outsourcing their R&D at an extraordinary rate, but the amount destined for the business sectors is increasing more rapidly than the amount destined for Swiss universities. In other sectors, for example in the machine industry, companies have reorganised, and small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) are now the innovators.
The outlook is changing from ‘not invented here’ to ‘proudly found elsewhere’. Innovation is moving from local R&D teams to collaboration, and from single discipline projects to multidisciplinary work.
How should public science and innovation policy adjust? Switzerland has a tradition of not using direct policy intervention. There is no provision of direct financial support for business R&D from government. All public funding instruments are directed towards the academic partner in science-industry co-operation. The main reason for this is that Switzerland has a strong private research base. It comprises both R&D-intensive multinational enterprises, and many innovative SMEs with strong positions in global market niches.
One success factor is having the right framework conditions, so that SMEs and large companies can work together on R&D. The most successful start-up in Switzerland, Actelion, rose with the backing of Roche. It is also essential to have clusters where all the skills for innovation, including finance, legal services, mentoring, international linkages, joint development programs, training, and the backing of the local authorities, are united. Switzerland boasts, in the life sciences notably, a number of such clusters that each constitute an innovation ecosystem.
Public science and innovation has two other challenges. We have a unique responsibility to foster basic research. It is long-lasting investments in basic science within autonomous research universities that provide the basis of tomorrow’s innovations. This investment in basic research must also translate into outstanding teaching and result in a very well trained science and technology workforce.
We must also improve the supply of human resources in science and technology by reforming the university system, in part by allowing specialisation and quality assessments of universities. We also need to increase women’s interest in sciences and engineering.
The proportion of young people who enter tertiary education in Switzerland is modest, when compared to other nations. This is compensated for by the openness of our country, which allows for large inflows of foreign students, scientists and engineers, and by the quality of our vocational education. Will this last? Only if we remain attractive as a country and continue to provide a good quality of life.
In Switzerland, we still need to improve the framework conditions for innovation, notably our efforts to increase competition and reduce market segmentation. We must remove administrative, regulatory and financial barriers to entrepreneurship by, for example, reforming the bankruptcy laws, and improving the tax, institutional and legal framework for venture capitalism.
Given this context, I think that technology transfer should not be part of government policy. Technology transfer belongs in the portfolios of our entrepreneurial research universities. They must use it as a means of developing competitive advantage. Public policy should define a context for research that enables knowledge sharing and ensures clarity of expectation and reward. Public policy should not create conflicting expectations, unnecessary obstacles, or give in to the desire to micro manage.
Let me end by returning to the issue of Big Science. We are very proud to co-host one of the world’s biggest Big Science experiments at CERN. We hope that CERN will find evidence of the existence of the Higgs boson, a fundamental particle that underpins our current best understanding of Nature. Even if CERN can’t find the Higgs, I’m convinced of its importance for Switzerland’s prosperity in its role as a training ground for generations and generations of outstanding European physicists. Perhaps employing these highly educated and experienced physicists and engineers will prove the most effective way in which industry can engage with Big Science.
Adapted from a keynote speech given to the EIRMA annual conference in Montreux on 22 May 2008.