We have heard that everything that can be digitalised will be digitalised in the future! So overall good prospects for a knowledge society like Switzerland and many other countries on our globe. We now know them, the global megatrends of digitalisation and we also have read a lot about them: Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Internet of Things, Blockchain, Cognitive Computing, Autonomous Vehicles, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Intelligent Robots, Digital Twins, and more , Very impressive!
Nevertheless, in my market observations, I often have the impression that wherever these companies think that they are on their digitalisation journey, they are already years back. I then realise that everything is evolving massively faster than organisations are even able to conceptualise. Companies that ignore this wave can do that and claim in 5 years that they have absolutely rated this burst bubble correctly. Companies that deliberately “ignore” this wave and instead develop a certain amount of curiosity and perhaps even have some respect for their competitors, could already have successfully conquered new markets in 5 years.
The question now, who takes the first step! Can you afford to take the next step into the “unknown”? Also, the realisation that there are hardly any reference implementations that would be comparable to your organisation, does probably not really make you optimistic that in the end, everything is going to be fine.
Well, while we enjoy quite a stable economy in Switzerland, based on a well-thought-out and proven political system, we do not – and let’s be honest – really be one of the courageous entrepreneurs who start one startup after another of which 90% then disappear without a trace within a few years.
More courage is needed in Switzerland! Not to be ashamed in public when attempting to conquer the market with new Smart Products or Smart Services fails miserably. Today, we cultivate an unmistakable “zero-error culture” in many places and may well call ourselves a risk-averse society. Is that going to end good?!
But, you also have to look at it systemically and in that we are real “world champions”. Who does not know it, the Global Innovation Index (GII), thanks to its annual publications we like to boast at least in academic circles abroad as a highly developed country. The GII is a ranking that illustrates the innovative capacity of individual countries and delivers concrete figures on the innovation performance of a total of 126 countries and economies around the world using 80 indicators.
And now the well-guarded secret: Switzerland leads the league table for the eighth year in a row; in the truest sense of the word “world champion”. Other countries in the top-10 list are the Netherlands, Sweden, United Kingdom, Singapore, USA, Finland, Denmark, Germany and Ireland.
But beware, you should not praise the day before the evening and therefore need to interpret the numbers of the GII correctly. Despite the exceptional relative performance of Switzerland and other small countries (measured by the country’s population), it is evident that large countries overshadow small countries in terms of absolute, unscaled innovation input and output. In other words, while the innovation performance of Switzerland, Israel or other smaller countries such as Singapore and Malta is very notable relative to their gross domestic product (GDP) or other scaling factors, their overall share in the global economy as a whole (researchers, global R&D expenditure, total number of patent applications according to origin and publications) it is rather less impressive worldwide; especially compared to the US and China, which dominate these rankings by far.
I ask myself: Are we ready for the digitalisation future? Yes, we are clearly ready for the digitalisation future. Switzerland is also motivated and willing to tackle this. Not only the companies say that, but the entire population. Who does not know it, the World Happiness Report (WHR), which is published annually by the United Nations. The report includes life satisfaction rankings in different countries of the world, which are derived from data analysis from different perspectives of a society. Switzerland is currently fifth after Finland, Norway, Denmark and Iceland. We remain modest and always work on our quality of life. But if we stay tuned and develop even more joie de vivre, continue to write EDUCATION in big letters and care more about the weaker of our society and then it will fit perfectly!
