When Biopôle was founded, ‘entrepreneurship’ had only just started to become a viable profession. Now Switzerland is seeing record numbers of new ventures, with an average of 143 companies launched each day, according to figures reported in Organisator. We spoke to Alain Barbal, Director and former CEO of Novostia, with many other life sciences ventures under his belt, about the drivers behind this shift – and what further evolutions we might see in the years to come.

Explosion of entrepreneurship has opened up new career trajectories – to a wide range of people

As Alain pithily put it, ‘a lot has changed in the past 20–30 years – and I feel lucky to have been around for long enough to be part of the change’. Indeed, Alain now serves as an expert for Innosuisse, Switzerland’s innovation agency, which allows him to see firsthand how popular careers in entrepreneurship have become across the country. In his words: ‘We’ve now got a high density of entrepreneurs. Last year, Innosuissereceived around 2,000 applications and accepted around 40% of them. We would never have seen that 20 years ago. Quantitatively speaking, it’s obvious that more and more people – of various ages and backgrounds – want to jump into the start-up economy.’

Indeed, leading on from this, Alain asserted that people from all walks of life have started to embrace the entrepreneurial path. Speaking in his capacity as Director and former CEO of Novostia, he explained: ‘We’ve recruited a huge range of engineers, managers and advisers with different experience and circumstances over the years – all they really need is passion, openness and a flair for collaboration. I am particularly delighted to have welcomed many women to Novostia – today, we have as many female as male employees working in management, research and more.’

By all means, as Alain recognised, the start-up landscape is still not perfectly equitable: in his eyes, ‘there is still probably an overall difference in the opportunities that are available to young men versus young women’. Nevertheless, with more and more women studying STEM subjects at the highest level and start-ups embracing flexible working practices for parents, there are more options than ever before for people wishing to build a career in the life sciences industry.

On the other hand, Alain did express some wistfulness related to the professionalisation of the start-up market: ‘I feel that as entrepreneurship has become more popular and professionalised, it has become a bit standardised – and where you have standardisation, you weaken or even kill creativity. Back in the 1990s and 2000s, people were throwing around completely novel ideas, whereas it’s hard to find a totally new niche nowadays. But as the market evolves, you have to leave some things behind.’

Levers versus barriers to entrepreneurship in Switzerland today

Following on from this, we discussed the advantages and drawbacks of the Swiss start-up landscape and how these affect new ventures in 2024.

First and foremost, Alain pointed to Switzerland’s strong entrepreneurial culture and heritage: ‘Innovation in Switzerland can be traced back to the 19th century, with the establishment of pioneering sectors such as watchmaking, textiles, chemicals and pharmaceuticals (particularly in the Basel region, which is home to global leaders Novartis and Roche) during the Industrial Revolution. Then, since the mid-20th century, Swiss innovation has also been supported by a range of public policies, which have led to the creation of organisations like Innosuisse as well as attractive tax policies and strong intellectual property regulation, creating a favourable environment for entrepreneurship.’

As a result, according to Alain, Swiss people are already used to working in the open-minded, innovative manner popularised by start-ups: ‘We’ve got a long history of solving complex problems in a transdisciplinary, collaborative way.’ On top of this, as Alain continued, ‘Switzerland has a range of excellent, highly ranked educational institutions, meaning that there is a pool of local talent just waiting to be tapped.’

Furthermore, Alain praised the funding available in Switzerland, stating that ‘everything we do today has been made possible by much better funding infrastructure’. With a multitude of financing options at both the canton and confederation level, as well as programmes offered through academic institutions, innovation ecosystems and beyond, nascent entrepreneurs nowadays have access to a lot of support. In Alain’s words: ‘You can’t really expect more. I always say: “If you fail to launch your start-up, it’s not for a lack of initial funding, it’s because of something else.”’

However, there are other challenges to contend with. Indeed, we’ve explored many of the positives of the explosion of entrepreneurship in Switzerland over the past two decades, but it must be said that with more start-ups comes more competition. ‘The net amount invested in the life sciences sector has grown significantly over the past 20 years and will continue to grow, according to analysis by Deloitte and Fortune Business Insights, among others,’ Alain said. ‘This is obviously a positive trend. The difficulty is that you have more and more projects vying for this money, meaning that innovation has become a wildly competitive race: you have to convince prospective investors and intermediaries not only that your project is worthwhile, but better than someone else’s.’

Moreover, innovation has become ever more expensive over the past two decades. Alain mapped out the lay of the land for us, arguing that ‘it’s comparatively easy to raise a few hundred thousand Swiss francs or even a few million for a first trial, but it becomes difficult to sustain this over a long period of time – and innovation does take a long time’. This is because, in Alain’s estimation, ‘we have more and more constraints to cope with’. To be sure, as Alain acknowledged, regulation is in place for a reason: ‘You have to be cautious in the life sciences sector, otherwise you’ll put patients’ lives at risk.’ However, he insisted: ‘There is a discrepancy today between the regulation we have to cope with in Switzerland – and in Europe – versus other countries. That means R&D processes take an age – and you burn through millions with each year you delay going to market. For Novostia, it can take 10 to 15 years to conduct in vitro tests on benches, in vivo tests on animals, clinical trials on human beings and then get market approval. It costs a fortune! Innovation didn’t used to be so expensive, I’m not surprised people are put off investing now.’

Looking to the future: Challenges – but also opportunities – lie ahead

During our conversation, Alain didn’t shy away from the fact that the life sciences/general start-up market is facing a great deal of uncertainty due to political and social upheaval in the wider global system. In his words: ‘Switzerland used to be a very stable, reliable country where you could anticipate political decisions. But this is less the case nowadays – never mind elsewhere in the world. As a result, it’s difficult for entrepreneurs to predict what will happen with regulation, supply chains or funding infrastructure. Notably, we’ve now been excluded from a number of European programmes : Novostia was lucky to receive €2.5m a few years ago from the EU, but that wouldn’t be possible now. That throws a lot of things up in the air.’

Indeed, Alain forecast that there will be major shifts in the decades to come. Reflecting on the course of his career, he wondered if the pendulum might swing back to the status quo he experienced when he was starting out in the life sciences: ‘To take just one example, in the 1980s and 1990s there was a big push in industrialised European nations to offshore production, meaning we don’t have all that much manufacturing capacity here in Europe anymore. But now we’re seeing more European companies reconsider this model due to geopolitical tensions, rising labour costs elsewhere in the world and a desire to reduce supply chain vulnerabilities and environmental impact. It’s an interesting development – we’ll all need to adapt to it, but it will take time.’

With all this said, he still expressed hope for the next generation of entrepreneurs, offering the following guidance: ‘If you’re starting a new venture, my advice would be “think big, think global”, even in this archipelagic world. I get the sense that in Switzerland we often think small, but there’s so much potential out there if you cast your net wider and look for niches in bigger markets. Just consider Asia: the continent represents 4.75 billion inhabitants, accounting for almost 60% of the world’s population. We need to think about learning Asian languages, embracing the culture and actively seeking out partnerships with companies in this huge region.’

Indeed, we ended on a very optimistic note, with Alain proclaiming: ‘I believe that in Switzerland we have everything we need to succeed: market maturity, competency and an innovative, entrepreneurial culture.’ Notably, Alain himself expressed a desire to keep on working in entrepreneurship: ‘I still feel motivated and inspired, even after 40 years in the industry. I hope I’ve got at least another ten years to throw myself into new projects, using artificial intelligence, machine learning, virtual reality and advanced robotics – when applied to the life sciences, I think these new technologies have the potential to educate and serve a wide range of people, from marginalised young people to isolated senior citizens. It’s all to play for.’