Beyond the Crédit Suisse crisis, beyond the end of banking secrecy, Switzerland maintains its economic power as an industrial giant and export leader. With a GDP per capita of 92,100 dollars, one of the highest in the world (29,350 in Spain), and full employment (unemployment is below 4%), with multinationals of the stature of Nestlé, Roche or Novartis and a watch industry that has managed to reinvent itself after the quartz crisis in the seventies, the country is a model of success. Industrial innovation, public-private collaboration and powerful dual training are the three legs on which this model is based, as has been confirmed by the mission of a group of Catalan businessmen from FemCat, the foundation that brings together more than 500 companies that represent 8% of Catalonia's GDP.
The president of FemCat, David Marín, highlights “the consistent and long-term policies” of the country, together with the “dialogue, commitment and unity of action between universities and research centers, vocational training, companies and the Administration” , in his opinion, an example to emulate “if we really want to bet on innovation and excellence.”
From his experience at the head of Nestlé, he believes that innovation must be based “on technology, but also on anticipation, you have to know how to anticipate what the consumer will want and bet on sustainable quality over time.” “You have to know how to accept mistakes – he adds – and put a bright light on it, work for the future. With Nespresso, for example, we were losing money for ten years, but we still continued to support the brand.” “George Clooney helped too, of course,” he jokes.
“What should the Generalitat and the central government do to be like Switzerland? First, listen; second listen; Third, listen,” Cantarell remarks. And he remembers that as vice president of Nestlé in charge of the business in Europe “he could speak without problems with Emmanuel Macron, then Minister of Economy and Industry; In Catalonia it was difficult for me, but in the end President Artur Mas welcomed me; But with the central government there was no way, they had no interest.”
This support from the institutions has been felt here by Josep Solà, a researcher from Santa Coloma de Farners established in Switzerland since 2004, where he has developed a technology to constantly control blood pressure using a bracelet. He arrived “with only a Clio and some skis” and, after working for a few years at the CSEM, he created the company Aktiia, which now has 80 employees and aspires to be a new unicorn in the Swiss startup ecosystem. Solà highlights that “there is a desire here to make technologies fly far” and recalls the State funding that research centers receive as the key to the success of this model.
Jordi Cuixart, businessman and former president of Òmnium Cultural, has also had the support of Innosuisse, the innovation promotion agency, to open in Neuchâtel a subsidiary of his company, Aranow, manufacturer of machinery for the packaging of pharmaceutical and food products. . Cuixart explains that Innosuisse contributes 50% of the non-refundable funds of the projects it selects and highlights “the support at all times”, as well as the existence of “solid structures that generate trust”. With nine million inhabitants, Switzerland allocates more than 7 billion euros a year to innovation and is considered the most innovative country in the world, according to the ranking prepared by the UN.
The connection with universities and vocational training centers is key. Daniel Crespo, rector of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), highlights the close interrelation that exists in Switzerland between universities such as those of Geneva and Lausanne, or the EPFL polytechnic, with research centers such as the CSEM or the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN) and the companies themselves. “In the world, good innovation environments always occur where university centers and business ecosystems are close. Research is global, but innovation is local, because you need companies nearby that develop advances and with which you can work closely,” he points out. “For an advance to have market value, for it to work, you have to have everything nearby: research, capital and companies that make what you are innovating a reality.”
Vanesa Daza, vice-rector of Knowledge Transfer at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), who was invited to the Swiss mission together with Crespo and the vice-rectors of the Autònoma and Barcelona universities, expresses the same sentiment. “Here they all go together, they work as a single innovation park. It is a model that we must learn from and try to implement in Catalonia,” she says.
For the rector of the UPC, “Switzerland shows that we cannot compete on salaries, that we have to compete for something else, for innovation and excellence.” Because “the commitment to innovation – he adds – is a commitment to survival.”
This Swiss excellence is also supported by another educational pillar, vocational training. Here the course program is prepared jointly by companies, administrations and the educational sector. The figure of the apprentice in companies is highly valued, so that young people from 16 years old combine attending class (two days a week) with working in a company (three days) for four courses. Once this training is completed, they can choose to enter university to continue studying.
Machinery companies such as Bobst, in Lausanne, and Mikron, in Neuchâtel, have specific apprenticeship programs. Mikron, for example, with a workforce in Switzerland of 500 workers, trains 40 apprentices, who earn between 300 euros the first year and 1,200 the last (the average salary of an employee is 5,000 euros). In their case, the apprentices form a business unit that sells the parts it produces to the company, and which must maintain a budget balance. From Mikron they explain that 24% of their apprentices later continue higher studies at the university and around 10% stay to work in the company.
For Carles Cuyàs, president of the Fundació Impulsa, which grants scholarships to students with problems of social exclusion, “it is urgent to implement a vocational training system like the Swiss one in Catalonia. How can it be that it has been working here for 30 years and we can't do it?” Cuyàs recalls that youth unemployment in Catalonia reaches 21%, while the school dropout rate exceeds 20% and warns that “niche areas of difficult coexistence are being created for the future.”
In the opinion of Daniel Crespo (UPC), “we need flexibility that the current FP law does not provide; “It would be good to include the possibility of carrying out pilot tests.”
