Gruyère cheese, chocolate, watches... Alexandre Edelmann can't help smiling when the clichés about his country are listed out. "In truth, I love them: They tell our story," said the young man. "And they're a good basis for explaining what Switzerland is really like today." The agency Edelmann heads, Presence Switzerland, is responsible for promoting the country abroad. To dispel its image as a quiet, lakeside Alpine nation, he likes to point out that, some 15 years ago, Google chose to set up its largest research and development (R&D) center outside the United States in Zurich, where the group employs almost 5,000 people.
He could also cite a series of figures illustrating Switzerland's competitiveness, far from limited to its abnormally large banking sector (which accounts for 10% of gross domestic product, GDP) or its reputation as a tax haven (the nation devotes 3.2% of its GDP to R&D every year, according to the World Bank). That is more than the European average (2.15%) and that of France (2.35%). Industry accounts for 25% of GDP, twice that of France. It is the country that files the most patents per million inhabitants, 1,031 in 2022, compared with 482 in Sweden, 161 in France and 142 in the US, according to the European Patent Office.
Finally, it has topped the World Intellectual Property Organization's Global Innovation Index for the past 12 years, and 14 of its companies – including Roche, Novartis, STMicroelectronics and Givaudan – are among the top 500 groups investing the most in research, according to the consulting firm EY. To this picture, one could add an unemployment rate of just 3.7% and a high trade surplus of 5% of GDP. "Our strong export performance is due as much to our major groups as to our web of SMEs [small and medium-sized enterprises], which are very strong in cutting-edge fields," boasted Jerry Krattiger, director of the Fribourg Development Agency. Medical technologies and the precision industry are especially notable in this regard.
How does this confederation of 8.7 million inhabitants, divided into 26 cantons, with four languages and occupied 70% by mountains, manage to achieve such success? "It's precisely because we're a small territory without raw materials that we've had to bet everything on brains," explained Sophie Cerny of Switzerland Innovation, the foundation that coordinates the country's six major innovation parks. "The entrepreneurial and pragmatic spirit is rooted in the mentality," confirmed Gilles Andrier, CEO of Givaudan, the world leader in the manufacture of flavors and fragrances. "In a country with such a narrow domestic market and high costs, the only way for companies to survive is to sell abroad and focus on quality," said Nicola Thibaudeau, head of MPS, a company specializing in high-precision ball bearings.
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