Tag Archives: Switzerland

Technology Transfer according to EPFL and Rules for Startups

Technology transfer has best practices but it is not so easy to read about them. The Technology Transfer Office (TTO) at Ecole Polytechnique de Lausanne (EPFL) had the great idea to publish how it manages the specific situation of startup creation. In March 2022, it published its New Guidelines for start-ups at EPFL. It is a very interesting document and I advise people curious about the topic to read it. “I wish I had it when I launched my start-up!” claims one of the EPFL entrepreneur. At the same time, the head of EPFL’S TTO was interviewed by Nature Communication and the document is worth reading too. Here is the link : A conversation on technology transfer. I will quote it at the end of the post.

Here are some data:

– For exclusive licenses, EPFL obtains either a number of shares equivalent to 10% of the start-up capital stock at incorporation, or a lower share of the capital stock that is undiluted until the start-up has received a certain amount of equity investment, e.g. 5% of capital share undiluted until the total accumulated investment reaches the amount of 5 MCHF, regardless of the value of the company.

Royalties are applicable on sales and depend on the industry
Pharma 2–5%
Medtech 2–4%
Sensors, optics and robotics 1.5–3%
Environmental sciences & energy 1–3%
Computer and communication 1.5–3%
Semiconductors 1–3%
Software 1-25%
(this last % may be surprising and I assume it applies to licenses of fully usable software as a product)

– Exit : At the time of exit, EPFL will diligently consider any request of a start-up to transfer the licensed patents to an acquiring company that is committed and that has the capacity to further develop and commercialize the technology. The companies shall furnish the necessary business information to allow EPFL to understand the needs of such a transfer, and in the case of a royalty buyout to make a valuation of the licensed patents in terms of potential sales.

As promised some interesting elements from the interview. The words in bold are my choice.

“Contrary to what might be expected, the main factor is not necessarily the idea or technology itself, but people’s involvement. The actual and future commitment of the individuals involved in the commercialization of the technology is paramount, both on the academic and industrial sides. The commercialization of technologies is a long journey, from development, through de-risking, including prototyping and preliminary clinical validations, market analysis and industrialization, to the first sale. As no technology will find the path to commercialization by itself, long-term commitment is key.”

Entrepreneurship is an effective way to increase the odds, by having a single actor transitioning and playing both roles. While this strategy requires a double commitment in terms of time and risk taking, it may lead to a higher potential reward for the researcher.”

“It’s certainly a positive development that PhD students and postdocs now have a third option to consider besides staying in academia or taking a job in industry — that of becoming an entrepreneur — and an increasing number of great examples of entrepreneurs and start-up role models exist.”

“If personal motivation and commitment to entrepreneurship are present, the start-up route is the way to go. It’s important to understand that many TTOs do not create start-ups. Researchers, as “founders”, do it.”

A big thank you to my dear former colleagues in Switzerland for mentioning this very much needed information.

Swiss Startups : new analyzes, without real surprise …

A new and interesting report on Swiss startups has just been published by Startupticker, the Swiss Startup Radar.

It shows a fairly new information, the number of startup created a year, about 300,

and their slow growth …

Interesting testimonials also:

Is it due to the much-cited conditions? (Page 80)
No, Switzerland’s regulatory and fiscal framework is first-rate. But I identify two deficits in the support services available in Switzerland: first, there is a lack of contact points for entrepreneurs in the low and no-tech sectors, and, second, we tend to address young people.

More money is one thing, but is it spent differently? Page 89)
In Switzerland, I observe a strong focus on the survival rate. Startups are encouraged if they have collateral, such as patents, and take a cautious course. As a result, eight out of 10 startups from ETH Zurich are still active five years after their foundation. In Israel, on the other hand, more attention is paid to the economic impact. What matters when assessing a project is the prospect of growth and the creation of new jobs.

The awareness that investing in startups can lead to losses is undoubtedly more pronounced in Israel. This is particularly evident in the financing of very young projects. In Switzerland, seed rounds are worked on with thick business plans, PowerPoint presentations and sales projections. In Israel, this paper war has been largely dispensed with. The business angels and VCs accept that there can be no absolute security in the high-tech segment.

In an article by Techcrunch, 30 European startup CEOs call for better stock option policies, we also talk about the gaps in the framework conditions in Switzerland:

with the following recommendations:
1. Create a stock option scheme that is open to as many startups and employees as possible, offering favourable treatment in terms of regulation and taxation. Design a scheme based on existing models in the UK, Estonia or France to avoid further fragmentation and complexity.
2. Allow startups to issue stock options with non-voting rights, to avoid the burden of having to consult large numbers of minority shareholders.
3. Defer employee taxation to the point of sale of shares, when employees receive cash benefit for the first time.
4. Allow startups to issue stock options based on an accepted ‘fair market valuation’, which removes tax uncertainty.
5. Apply capital gains (or better) tax rates to employee share sales.
6. Reduce or remove corporate taxes associated with the use of stock options.

Sensirion prepares its IPO

Sensirion finally announces its IPO. The spin-off from ETH Zurich was founded in 1998 and many were expecting such an event from a very succesful but quite discrete company. Sensirion has disclosed some numbers and I had followed the development of the company thanks to some data from the Zurich register of commerce. So as usual here is my guess of the capitalization table. And I look forward to compare it with the data from the IPO prospectus when it will be published…


Felix Mayer and Moritz Lechner, co-founders of Sensirion

Again this is guessing only. As you might see, the early funding rounds are unknown to me. I am not sure about how many shares the founders, main investor and employees have adn I am not sure either at which price the company will be priced. I based my numbers on about twice the company sales in 2017… The company claims Knoch has 55% of the company, the founders 14% and employees 8.5%. It does not look to far…

The Sensirion IPO prospectus is not public and is confidential so I cannot publish more than I have here. I can only write I was not too far from the truth despite some discrepancy…

Is Switzerland a Startup Nation?

This is the question I was asked to answer at the EPFL Forum today. Well it was even “Is Switzerland the Startup Nation?” I did not answer the question but tried to provide food for thought and I invite you to look at the slides below.

Now that you may have read them, I will add two points I did not mention in my talk:

First Swiss newspaper Le Temps analyzed the issue: Are we, too, a start-up nation from the point of view of the Israelis? ‘I have a message for Switzerland, Dov Moran announces: you do not have enemies and so you do not have to spend 20% of your GDP on your protection. If you’re less entrepreneurial than us, it’s not that bad.’

Then again Orson Welles about creativity and war… “In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.” in The Third Man, said by Holly Martins to Harry Lime…

Just food for thought.

An analysis of EPFL’s Spin-offs and its Entrepreneurial Ecosystem

I usually do not mix my EPFL activity and my blog activity. This is one of the rare exceptions. At EPFL’s startup unit, we just published a short report describing EPFL spin-offs. Here is a short link. By the way you can also visit the pages about EPFL’s support to entrepreneurship.

The report gives data about value creation through fund raising and job creation and also about a known phenomenon, the importance of migrants for entrepreneurship. I am aware that value creation is a sensitive topic, all the more that in Europe venture capital has not proven a real correlation with value. It may even have destroyed more value than created any…

The State of the European Tech

The recently published The State of the European Tech, co-sponsored by Atomico and Slush is an extremley interesting analysis of the European tech start-up and VC scene. it is a rather long 118-slide document but most (not all) pages provide food for thought.

Here are a couple of comments, in the page order:

– The introduction is too optimistic (slides 5-7). I doubt their title: the future is being invented in Europe. But it has always been Atomico’s founder vision: see Europe and Start-ups : should we worry? Or is there hope? The future will tell us… One interesting point though: London, Berlin and Paris are the 3 hubs main European hubs and Paris was probably underestimated (in the past).

– The entrepreneurial mindset is continuously improving (slides 15-16). Repeat entrepreneurs are more numerous (slide 18). And they mention their importance not so much as future successful entrepreneurs (you may know my doubts – check Serial entrepreneurs: are they better?) but because of the experience and network they bring.

– I love slide 21 with EPFL #4 world wide in Computer Science (though I hate these rankings!). Switzerland is clearly on the map together with the UK. I am honestly less convinced about the impact of business schools in tech (slide 22). Talent exists in Europe but may not be available for tech (slide 23).

– Again the three top hubs are obvious: together London, Paris and Berlin outnumber Silicon Valley. But the ranking from #4 to #20 is mostly linked to city size, not so much any unique positioning. Tech is creating jobs faster than other industries (slide 26). Never too late! But again Europe is fragmented with 153 identified tech hubs (slide 34)

Migrants (slides 27-29). Again the UK is #1. France and Germany follow. And Switzerland is well-ranked (except for non-Europeans).

– Local entrepreneurs want to stay home (slide 37): 60% prefer home to another place in Euope (17%) or Silicon Valley (12%), even if 25% of founders incorporated outside of their home country (slide 38). Clearly Europe exists! Even if slide 39 shows more local migrations inside Europe, with the exception of London and Berlin again and the links between hubs are weak (slide 41)

– The slides about venture capital are the most surprising. Slide 46 shows that the European investments have jumped from less than $5B before 2013 to $13B in 2015-16. (In comparison the US is about $30B). And the growth is consistent from early eseed ($0-2M) to early stage ($2-5M) and later stage ($10-50+M). I assemble here their data about the UK, Germany, France and Switzerland (slides 50-52). A new generation of investors is confirmed, those who were entrepreneurs 1st (slide 60). The early such actors were Atomico, Liautaud/Balderton, Niel/Kima. But many emerge. A new generation of funds also emerge (slide 64), and yes, US funds invest in Europe (slide 65)

atomico_european_vc

– Their section about deep tech is less convincing (to me). Probably I did not fully understand what they meant by that and why it would be so special. Slides 78-9 about US tech giants coming to Europe and about their acquisitions in Europe is worth checking though.

– I was not convinced either about the growing awareness of European corporations of the importance of tech. Their investments and acquisitions are still small compared to their US counterparts (slides 84-86). But slide 83 is the confirmation of a scary situation. This is another illustration of the Darwinian and Lamarckian innovation. Look at next figure.

atomico_european_giants

– The section about scale-ups and exits (slides 89-101) could have been called unicorns & IPOs. I see bubbles and low value creations. Not good enough and not enough tech…

– Finally the lside about perceived risks is worth spending some time. they classify them as Business issues (40%); Economic issues (30%); European issues (22%); International issues (8%). But somehow their classification is subjective. For example if you combine risk aversion (4%), fear (2%), ambition (2%), that is 8%. And talent (4%), innovation (3%) and education (2%) would be another 9%. These elements which I consider as cultural could be considered as quite high…

All these notes were taken while reading so don’t see them as a deep analysis and you should build your own views about this really interesting analysis.

Crispr Therapeutics Ag, the Swiss start-up also files for Nasdaq

Last April, I published a short post about the hot Crispr Start-ups. At the time only Editas and Intellia had filed to go public. I could build Crispr Therapeutics cap. table thanks to Swiss registers data. Now Crispr Therapeutics Ag has also filed on Nasdaq (see its S-1). I was not so far from the truth as you may check the new and old cap. tables. Interesting data points…

– Crispr Therapeutics from Nasdaq filing
crispr_therapeutics_cap_table_sep16

– Crispr Therapeutics from Swiss register data
Crisper-Crispr

Challenges and Opportunities of Industry 4.0

I must say that last week I did not understand very well the “Industry 4.0” concept. And after a brief stay in Munich this week – where I had an explanation by E&Y – see below – but especially after reading the text of a speech entitled “Smart Industry 4.0 in Switzerland” (see pdf) given by Matthias Kaiserswerth, the “Business and Innovation Forum Slovakia – Switzerland” in Bratislava on June 20, I fully understood the importance of the subject. I also found out this morning two excellent reports: “Industry 4.0 – The role of Switzerland Within a European manufacturing revolution” (see pdf) by the firm Roland Berger and the “Digital Vortex – How Digital Disruption Is Redefining Industries’ (see pdf) published by Cisco and IMD. I got permission from Matthias Kaiserswerth to publish his speech here (I thank him for this) and this speech is an excellent introduction to the subject with many interesting ideas to solve the challenges ahead…

Smart Industry 4.0 in Switzerland

Matthias Kaiserswerth, Business and Innovation Forum Slovakia – Switzerland, 20.06.2016, Bratislava

In this brief input speech, I want to talk about some of the challenges and opportunities that the on-going digitalization has for the Swiss economy, our labor force and the education system.

Current State and Challenges

Unfortunately, Switzerland is not yet a leader in digitalization. When we compare ourselves with other OECD countries, we play at best in the middle field. From a policy point of view, we are behind the European Union. This month, June 7, our Ständerat, the smaller parliamentary chamber representing the cantons, has asked our government to analyze what economic effect the emerging EU single digital market will have on our country. Our current president, the minister for economy, education, and research in his response admitted that until the beginning of this year Switzerland had underestimated the 4th industrial revolution and now is trying to catch up with various measures[1].

ICTSwitzerland, the association of the Swiss ICT industry, earlier this year launched a scorecard [2] digital.swiss in which they rate Switzerland’s state of digitalization in 15 dimensions. While we have excellent basic infrastructure and rank highly on a generic international competitive index, we don’t yet sufficiently leverage digital technologies in the various sectors of our economy.

Scorecard
SI4.0-SwissScorecard

The scorecard reflects a classic Swiss paradox. Because of our very direct democratic system, built on subsidiarity, we provide good infrastructure and general economic framework. When it comes to leveraging these foundations, we leave it to private initiative as we don’t pursue an active industrial policy – certainly not at the federal level. So far our companies – mostly SMBs, 99.96% of our companies have less than 250 employees – have excelled at incremental innovation. Incremental innovation can be good for a long time, but it impedes dealing with major technology shifts that can disrupt an entire industry.

This happened in the 70s and early 80s when the “Quartz Revolution” almost extinguished Swiss watchmaking. Now again history may repeat itself as the watch industry missed or were too slow to embrace the trend towards smartwatches. Apple within the course of only one year managed to surpass with their watch-related revenues all Swiss watch companies even Rolex [3].

With the digital revolution, driven out of Silicon Valley, we compete with an entirely different innovation model, namely disruptive innovation.

Just look at examples from the sharing economy such as Airbnb and Uber.

But it doesn’t stop there. Consider computer companies now building the future self-driving electric car – Google being a prime example. While European OEMs had experimented for a long time with self-driving cars putting all the intelligence into the car, Google took an entirely different approach. Because of their maps, their work with Streetview, they already have very precise information about where the car is going and thus can leverage the power of connectivity and the cloud as well.

While we would strive to build the perfect battery for an electric car, Tesla took what we would consider inferior laptop batteries and leveraged IT to make them useful in their cars.

Opportunities

With the long Swiss tradition of bringing foreign talents into the country and allowing them to succeed, we have an outstanding opportunity not to miss out on the current industrial revolution. Many of our successful international companies got started by foreigners – just think of Nestle, ABB, or Swatch.

Businesses have now realized that meeting the pressures of the strong Swiss Franc with only cutting costs is insufficient. They are looking for different forms of innovation leveraging IT. About a year ago, various Swiss industry associations launched an initiative “Industry 2025” to change the mindset in our machine industry and alert them to the new opportunities [4].

Some companies though have seen these chances already long before our national bank stopped pegging the Swiss Franc to the Euro.

For example in 2012, Belimo a company producing actuator solutions to control heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems launched their “Energy Valve”. It consists of a 2-way characterized control valve, volumetric flow meter, temperature sensors and an actuator with integrated logic, that combines the five functions of measuring, controlling, balancing, shutting and monitoring energy into a single unit with its own web server as IT interface. The intelligent valve can be used to optimize water flow in heating and cooling systems and yields significant energy savings for its customers [5].

Other companies in the Swiss machine industry have started to think about how they can leverage Internet of Things (IoT) to create new businesses based on the data that their machines generate. A good example is LCA Automation, a company in the business of building factory automation solutions. They want to offer predictive maintenance based on dynamic condition monitoring of their installed factories. Leveraging existing information like current and position from frequency converters in their drives help understand how the machines are used. In select cases they install additional sensors to measure vibration, acoustic noise to allow their clients to schedule maintenance instead of running their installations to failure [6].

In my opinion, the challenges in addressing more of these opportunities are (1) cultural, (2) an IT skills gap, (3) finding and realizing new business models that best exploit the digital opportunity and finally (4) creating an environment where collaboration with external partners can let you innovate with speed.

Contrary to software, industrial products cannot be easily updated in the field, they are engineered to last 10 to 20 years. The mindset of the computer scientist: “we can fix it remotely with an update,” requires the mechanical and electrical engineers to rethink how they construct their systems. When Tesla had issues in 2013 with one of their cars catching fire because its suspension at high speeds lowered the car too close to the road, they did not issue a massive recall but instead remotely overnight changed the software in the cars to guarantee a higher distance between car and road.

Getting these diverse cultures to collaborate requires respect among the different professional disciplines and would call for the occasional computer scientist to serve on the board of industrial companies to challenge their established way of thinking.

The skills gap, finding enough software engineers interested to work in industrial companies is significant. Current predictions are that by 2022 Switzerland will lack 30’000 IT experts. Considering that industrial companies compete with the better paying finance industry for the same talents, means that industrial companies need to become very creative to address this shortage.

Implementing new business models that exploit the digital opportunities is a significant challenge for established industrial companies. If a company whose core business is selling industrial machines, wants to start offering value added subscription based services to optimize the industrial process realized by their products, they get into an entirely new business. They will need to decide whether these services are only available for a process realized by only their machines or whether they want to offer it also on competitors’ installations. They need to devise a new sales incentive scheme based on a recurring revenue stream. They need to build a support infrastructure that matches the optimized process and no longer consists of experts that only know about their own machine. In short, they need to build an entirely new business. Doing so inside an established large company is extremely hard maybe even more so than doing it in an external startup.

Finally, creating a collaborative environment with external partners to innovate with speed is not something unique to the age of digitalization, however it will be key for industrial companies to capture the opportunity. In spite of the good examples from large industrial companies like Procter and Gamble around Open Innovation, a concept coined 13 years ago, many firms still have a strong sentiment of doing everything themselves or with their established supply chain partners. In the case of digitalization, however, new partners from outside the traditional industry need to be involved and made part of the solution. “Rather than using their own R&D budget, enterprises can leverage venture capitalist investments and integrate a technology solution in an accelerated timeframe” [7].

Education

Before I close, let me get back to education, a topic of particular importance in this new era. Switzerland has an excellent education system. However, we have a significant shortage of students that pursue a career in the Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics field (in short STEM) in addition to a skills gap in STEM for all the other students.

In 2014, the German speaking cantons launched a new common competence oriented curriculum “Lehrplan 21” (LP21) to address the skills gap by putting more focus on STEM subjects. For example, by introducing a new subject called Media and Informatics, the cantonal education ministers have accepted the notion that all students need basic skills in computer science to succeed in the professional or academic education system. As we speak, this LP21 is being implemented in the German speaking part of Switzerland, albeit not fast enough for my taste.

To succeed with LP21 we also need to qualify the teachers to competently teach these subjects in a way that keeps all students motivated. Specifically female students have a significantly lower self-perception in how they master technology and what they can use technology for [8]. The consequence is that we lose the female talent also in our workforce. So for example, in IT there are only 13% women in the Swiss workforce.

Promoting women in technology as role models and broadening specific programs to get girls interested in technology at a primary school age will hopefully help to bridge the gender gap in the long run.

Summary

When we look at the system of the Federal Polytechnic Schools (ETH Zurich and EPF Lausanne), the universities and specifically also the universities of applied science, government funding for research then we have an outstanding foundation upon which we can build to effectively compete in this 4th Industrial Revolution. It now requires a new mind set for our industrial companies to embrace the emerging IoT, Big Data, and artificial intelligence trends and the courage to experiment with the new business models that they enable.

You don’t get disrupted because you don’t see the technological shift and opportunity, you get disrupted because you chose to ignore it.


1: http://www.inside-it.ch/articles/44100
2: http://digital.ictswitzerland.ch/en/
3: http://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-watch-with-sizable-sales-cant-shake-its-critics-1461524901
4: http://www.industrie2025.ch/industrie-2025/charta.html
5: http://energyvalve.com
6: http://www.industrie2025.ch/fileadmin/user_upload/casestudies/industrie2025_fallbeispiel_lca_automation_2.pdf
7: https://www.accenture.com/ch-en/insight-enterprise-disruption-open-innovation
8: http://www.satw.ch/mint-nachwuchsbarometer/MINT-Nachwuchsbarometer_Schweiz_DE.pdf

Postscript: I mentioned above the presentation by E&Y, here is the slide that struck me…

Global Entrepreneurship 2016 – Part 1: the Macroeconomics

I just read two great reports about entrepreneurship. The first one is the Global Entrepreneurship Index 2016 (GEI). The second one is the Startup Playbook by Sam Altman (Ycombinator). Whereas the second one is about the micro features of entrepreneurship, the GEI is a worldwide macro-economic analysis. I will cover the Startup Playbook in the part 2 of these series of posts, so let me focus here in the GEI.

Global-Entrepreneurship-Index

What I found really interesting is that compared to the Global Innovation Index (GII) about which I always have doubts – I think it measures more the inputs necessary for innovation than the outputs – I feel much more comfortable with the criteria and results of the GEI. For example, the USA is number one which makes a lot of sense and Switzerland is #8. Switzerland is #1 in the GII which is some kind of a mystery to me. France and Israel are #10 and #21 in the GEI but #20 and #21 in the GII.

Global-Entrepreneurship-Index-USA-Isr-CH-FR

The 3 As of Entrepreneurship

So how is this measured? The authors define 3 framework conditions entrepreneurship: attitudes, abilities and aspirations.[Pages 26-27 of the document or 49-50 of the pdf]. They also define 14 related pillars [Pages 19-22 of the document or 42-45 of the pdf]

Entrepreneurial attitudes are societies’ attitudes toward entrepreneurship, which we define as a population’s general feelings about recognizing opportunities, knowing entrepreneurs personally, endowing entrepreneurs with high status, accepting the risks associated with business startups, and having the skills to launch a business successfully. The benchmark individuals are those who can recognize valuable business opportunities and have the skills to exploit them; who attach high status to entrepreneurs; who can bear and handle startup risks; who know other entrepreneurs personally (i.e., have a network or role models); and who can generate future entrepreneurial activities.

Moreover, these people can provide the cultural support, financial resources, and networking potential to those who are already entrepreneurs or want to start a business. Entrepreneurial attitudes are important because they express the general feeling of the population toward entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship. Countries need people who can recognize valuable business opportunities, and who perceive that they have the required skills to exploit these opportunities. Moreover, if national attitudes toward entrepreneurship are positive, it will generate cultural support, financial support, and networking benefits for those who want to start businesses.

Entrepreneurial abilities refer to the entrepreneurs’ characteristics and those of their businesses. Different types of entrepreneurial abilities can be distinguished within the realm of new business efforts. Creating businesses may vary by industry sector, the legal form of organization, and demographics—age, education, etc. We define entrepreneurial abilities as startups in the medium- or high-technology sectors that are initiated by educated entrepreneurs, and launched because of someone being motivated by an opportunity in an environment that is not overly competitive. In order to calculate the opportunity startup rate, we use the GEM TEA Opportunity Index. TEA captures new startups not only as the creation of new ventures but also as startups within existing businesses, such as a spinoff or other entrepreneurial effort. Differences in the quality of startups are quantified by the entrepreneur’s education level—that is, if they have a postsecondary education—and the uniqueness of the product or service as measured by the level of competition. Moreover, it is generally maintained that opportunity motivation is a sign of better planning, a more sophisticated strategy, and higher growth expectations than “necessity” motivation in startups.

Entrepreneurial aspiration reflects the quality aspects of startups and new businesses. Some people just hate their employer and want to be their own boss, while others want to create the next Microsoft. Entrepreneurial aspiration is defined as the early-stage entrepreneur’s effort to introduce new products and/or services, develop new production processes, penetrate foreign markets, substantially increase their company’s staff, and finance their business with formal and/or informal venture capital. Product and process innovation, internationalization, and high growth are considered the key characteristics of entrepreneurship. Here we added a finance variable to capture the informal and formal venture capital potential that is vital for innovative startups and high-growth firms.

Each of these three building blocks of entrepreneurship influences the other two. For example, entrepreneurial attitudes influence entrepreneurial abilities and entrepreneurial aspirations, while entrepreneurial aspirations and abilities also influence entrepreneurial attitudes.

GEI-Conditions

The 14 Pillars of Entrepreneurship

The pillars of entrepreneurship are many and complex. While a widely accepted definition of
entrepreneurship is lacking, there is general agreement that the concept has numerous dimensions. […] Considering all of these possibilities and limitations, we define entrepreneurship as “the dynamic, institutionally embedded interaction between entrepreneurial attitudes, entrepreneurial abilities, and entrepreneurial aspirations by individuals, which drives the allocation of resources through the creation and operation of new ventures.”

Entrepreneurial Attitudes Pillars

Pillar 1: Opportunity Perception. This pillar captures the potential “opportunity perception” of a population by considering the size of its country’s domestic market and level of urbanization. Within this pillar is the individual variable, Opportunity Recognition, which measures the percentage of the population that can identify good opportunities to start a business in the area where they live. However, the value of these opportunities also depends on the size of the market. The institutional variable Market Agglomeration consists of two smaller variables: the size of the domestic market (Domestic Market) and urbanization (Urbanization). The Urbanization variable is intended to capture which opportunities have better prospects in developed urban areas than they do in poorer rural areas.

Pillar 2: Startup Skills
. Launching a successful venture requires the potential entrepreneur to have the necessary startup skills. Skill Perception measures the percentage of the population who believe they have adequate startup skills. Most people in developing countries think they have the skills needed to start a business, but their skills usually were acquired through workplace trial and error in relatively simple business activities. In developed countries, business formation, operation, management, etc., requires skills that are acquired through formal education and training. Hence education, especially postsecondary education, plays a vital role in teaching and developing entrepreneurial skills.

Pillar 3: Risk Acceptance. Of the personal entrepreneurial traits, fear of failure is one of the most important obstacles to a startup.

Pillar 4: Networking. Networking combines an entrepreneur’s personal knowledge with their ability to use the Internet for business purposes. This combination serves as a proxy for networking, which is also an important ingredient of successful venture creation and entrepreneurship.

Pillar 5: Cultural Support. This pillar is a combined measure of how a country’s inhabitants view entrepreneurs in terms of status and career choice, and how the level of corruption in that country affects this view.

Entrepreneurial Abilities Pillars

Pillar 6: Opportunity Startup. This is a measure of startups by people who are motivated by opportunity but face regulatory constraints. An entrepreneur’s motivation for starting a business is an important signal of quality. Opportunity entrepreneurs are believed to be better prepared, to have superior skills, and to earn more than what we call necessity entrepreneurs.

Pillar 7: Technology Absorption. In the modern knowledge economy, information and communication technologies (ICT) play a crucial role in economic development. Not all sectors provide the same chances for businesses to survive and or their potential for growth. The Technology Level variable is a measure of the businesses that are in technology sectors.

Pillar 8: Human Capital. The prevalence of high-quality human capital is vitally important for ventures that are highly innovative and require an educated, experienced, and healthy workforce to continue to grow.

Pillar 9: Competition. Competition is a measure of a business’s product or market uniqueness, combined with the market power of existing businesses and business groups.

Entrepreneurial Aspirations Pillars

Pillar 10: Product Innovation. New products play a crucial role in the economy of all countries. New Product is a measure of a country’s potential to generate new products and to adopt or imitate existing products.

Pillar 11: Process Innovation. Applying and/or creating new technology is another important feature of businesses with high growth potential. New Tech is defined as the percentage of businesses whose principal underlying technology is less than five years old.

Pillar 12: High Growth. This is a combined measure of the percentage of high-growth businesses that intend to employ at least ten people and plan to grow more than 50 percent in five years (Gazelle variable) with business strategy sophistication (Business Strategy variable).

Pillar 13: Internationalization. Internationalization is believed to be a major determinant of growth. A widely applied proxy for internationalization is exporting.

Pillar 14: Risk Capital. The availability of risk finance, particularly equity rather than debt, is an essential precondition for fulfilling entrepreneurial aspirations that are beyond an individual entrepreneur’s personal financial resources.

The reason I really felt synchronized with the authors (congrats to Zoltán J. Ács, László Szerb, Erkko Autio for the great work!) is a final extract from pages 63-64 (86-87 of the pdf): they explain the challenges and related mistakes and describe better approaches.

Unfortunately, although high-growth entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial ecosystems are high on many policy agendas, there is fairly little understanding of how policy can foster them most effectively. Most entrepreneurship policy playbooks remain stuck with old world policy approaches, which focus on identifying and fixing “market failures” and “structural failures.” Such approaches, while effective in addressing well-specified market and structural failures, are hopelessly inadequate to deal with the complexities of entrepreneurial ecosystems.
A classic example of a market failure is the failure of businesses to invest in R&D. Because R&D is a risky and uncertain activity, many firms are tempted to wait, to let others to take the risk, and then quickly copy successful projects. But if everyone thought this way, no one would invest in R&D, and innovative activities would stagnate. Therefore, governments address this market failure by providing subsidies for R&D—in effect, participating in the downside risk while allowing firms to keep the upside returns.
In contrast to subsidizing specific activities, a structural failure policy would seek to build support services and structures that support new firm creation and growth. Examples of structural failure policies include, for example, the creation of science parks and business incubators to shelter and support startup ventures.
Both of these approaches fail to address the complexities of entrepreneurial ecosystems, which are too complex to allow easy identification of specific clean-cut market failures, such as insufficient investment in R&D. The “product” entrepreneurial ecosystems produce is innovative and high-growth new ventures. Creating high-growth new ventures is a far more complex undertaking than starting an R&D project. If we do not see a sufficient number of high-growth new ventures, where exactly is the market failure supposed to reside? The standard approach by governments, which is consistent with market failure thinking, is that there perhaps is not sufficient support funding available to start new, high-growth firms. However, as much as governments have provided subsidies to support new firm creation, the results have not been very encouraging.
Another major problem with both market failure and structural failure approaches is that they are top-down, where the policy maker analyzes, designs, and implements entrepreneurship policy. Top-down, however, is not a feasible approach in entrepreneurial ecosystems that consist of multiple independent stakeholders. In such situations, a policymaker cannot simply command and control, as you have no formal authority over ecosystem stakeholders. Instead, policymakers need to engage the various stakeholders and co-opt them as active participants and contributors to the policy intervention.
[…]
Entrepreneurial ecosystems are fundamentally interaction systems consisting of multiple, co-specialized, yet hierarchically independent stakeholders, many of which may not even know one another. Here, co-specialization means that different stakeholders play different roles—venture capitalists, research institutions, different supporting institutions, new ventures, established businesses, and so on. They offer complementary skills and services, and normally depend on others to accomplish their goals, which implies that team play is needed.
In the above, hierarchical independence means that there are no formal lines of command, unlike, say, within government agencies or industrial corporations. Everyone makes their own independent decisions and optimizes their own performance. Combined with co-specialization, this creates a mutual dependency dilemma: to accomplish your goals you must depend on others, yet you cannot tell others what to do. Cooperation is therefore required. This limits the usability of traditional top-down policies, which are usually implemented through formal chains of command (e.g., a government department designing a policy, which is then implemented by a government agency overseen by the department).
Also of relevance is the notion of interaction systems, which means that the stakeholders of entrepreneurial ecosystems “co-produce” their outputs, such as innovative high-growth new ventures. These outputs are coproduced through a myriad of usually uncoordinated interactions between hierarchically independent yet interdependent stakeholders. This combination of independence and interdependence makes coordination challenging.
In the GEI model, it is the entrepreneurs who drive the entrepreneurial trial-and-error dynamic. This means that entrepreneurs start new businesses to pursue opportunities that they themselves perceive. An entrepreneurial opportunity is simply a chance to make money through a new venture, such as producing and selling goods and services for profit. However, entrepreneurs can never tell in advance whether a given opportunity is real or not: the only way to validate an opportunity is to pursue it. In other words, entrepreneurs need to take risks: they need to access and mobilize resources (human, financial, physical, technological) before they can verify whether or not a profit can be made. This means, then, that not all entrepreneurial efforts will be successful, as some opportunities turn out to be mere mirages. In such cases, the budding entrepreneur will realize sooner or later that they are never going to make a profit, or that they could make more money doing something else. In such cases, the entrepreneur will abandon the current pursuit and do something else instead.
If, however, an entrepreneurial opportunity turns out to be real, the entrepreneurs will make more money pursuing that opportunity than doing something else, and they will continue to exploit it. The net outcome of this entrepreneurial trial-and-error dynamic, therefore, is the allocation of resources to productive uses. In other words, a healthy entrepreneurial dynamic within a given economy will drive total factor productivity, or the difference between inputs and outputs. The greater the total factor productivity, the greater the economy’s capacity to create new wealth.

The Challenges of Creating a Start-up

January is the month where we publish our start-up statistics at EPFL and when the media contact us to discuss the matter. I had the opportunity to share my views with Danny Baumann, from the AGEFI, and I have the feeling he gave a very good account of our exchange. Here it is:

Agefi

The EPF Lausanne has been creating, during the last ten years, on average fifteen start-ups per year. Hervé Lebret lists a few leads to follow.

DANNY BAUMANN

The numbers fell the day before yesterday (L’Agefi, January 6): Researchers at the Federal Institutes of Technology in Lausanne and Zurich have created 43 companies in 2015, including 18 in Lausanne. The Innovation Park of EPFL is growing year after year, with as a proof the 700 jobs created since its launch in 1991. Fintech, biotech, medtech are in the mouth of everyone, but how to successfully create and above all to perpetuate a start -up in the world in constant evolution that we know? There is obviously no quick fix, as explained by Hervé Lebret, innovation specialist and teacher at the EPFL.

The success of a start-up depends on countless parameters. These elements must be as the perfect alignment of planets for that success to occur. Random factors, such as chance, are part of this process. The EPFL provides financial support, eight and ten grants per year, the Innogrants. Launched in 2005 with the support of Lombard Odier, these Innogrants consist of a maximum of 100,000 francs in salary. This does not in any way guarantee the success of a start-up but is a great launching pad.

Hervé Lebret lists a few leads to follow. For starters, the overall vision is essential. Having an international goal rather than local. The future of a start-up must immediately be anticipated: it indeed reaches its maturity after five to seven years. “From that moment, either it is acquired by giants such as Google or Apple or it continues to develop via the equity markets. It rarely stays at the stage of SMEs with 20-30 employees”, adds Hervé Lebret. According to him, 90% to 99% of these young companies disappear within ten years.

Another major aspect: not being cautious about the market. “An entrepreneur with a start-up should keep in mind that his company should be constantly growing,” he continues. Being ambitious and trust your potential investors, in order to raise funds, even at the cost of losing some of her company’s control. A must for growth. On average, 100 million Swiss francs are invested annually from private funds in EPFL start-ups. But how to find investors? The award race is a great way to advertise its product. The first two years are rather of survival; it is at this point that the various awards are essential. “The prize is good, but after two years or so, do not forget to pass in growth mode,” he expressed. Many make the mistake of losing sight of the overall objective and thus remain too small in the market while the company development is vital.

A good recruitment is a major asset in the success. Then comes the question of wages to be paid. The newly recruited employees must be aware that the remuneration will be lower than in a large company. The stock options can be a good alternative to compensate for the difference in pay. Still remains the problem of the taxation of stock options which are still seen as an income even if they are paper only. It should be possible to find an agreement on a special status of “start-up” in the law. The issue has been debated for several years.

Other elements are still important for an entrepreneur such as flexibility, creating a dense network, or having mentors, and, this sounds obvious, have a passion for his product.

Macroeconomic factors also make their entrance. To name one, but essential, mainly in Switzerland, migration. Out of the 90 Innogrants distributed by EPFL since 2005, 75% of them have ended up in the hands of foreign entrepreneurs. And it’s not a matter of discrimination. Switzerland needs foreign brains. A long political debate.

For EPFL, creating start-ups, and related jobs, is a major asset. Not so much from a financial standpoint but rather for the image. Economically, revenues come from licenses granted (they receive dividends or royalties in exchange) to the various entities or from the sale of the start-ups, about 1% of the transaction value. [You may check again How much Equity Universities take in Start-ups from IP Licensing?] The image is much more noticeable. Getting the message of constant innovation, to the eyes of the world, is a vital point for EPFL and the country.

The case study of an ambitious start-up at EPFL.

L.E.S.S. Founders - Tissot and Rivier
Yann Tissot and Simon Rivier, co-fouders of L.E.S.S.

The young company L.E.S.S. (Light Efficient Systems) is the perfect example of a fast growing EPFL start-up. The optical fiber of the company helps in generating a new light system that does not leave indifferent the automotive or computer manufacturers. Yann Tissot, co-founder and CEO, received an EPFL Innogrant in 2011. With this investment, the start-up was founded in June 2012. From that time, ambition and passion of the young entrepreneur made the difference. Travelling around the world to make his product known and running the award race such as the Entrepreneurship Prize of the WA de Vigier Foundation, the Strategis Prize competition or the prize for second best Swiss start-up in 2014 [then the best one in 2015!]. Awards that enabled it to survive and to find investors. In April 2015, it raised a vital three million concluded with VI Partners, supervised by Alain Nicod, as well as from various business angels.
Today L.E.S.S. has nine employees and was close to reach one million in sales last year. The estimated income for 2016 will be of the order of several million francs. – (DB)