Get the latest digital thinking direct to your inbox. Join more than 14,000 fellow digital enthusiasts for our regular round-up of the latest news, project updates and ideas to inspire.
After subscribing to our newsletter you can download the document.
Digitalisation not only creates a myriad of new opportunities, technologies and business solutions, it can sometimes also enable criminal activity that harms businesses and individuals alike. According to Cybersecurity Ventures, the total cost of cyber fraud will exceed $ 6 trillion by 2021, with stolen passwords and pin codes making up more than 80% of that amount. One promising way to prevent cyber fraud, in particular identity theft, is to rely on strong authentication software products. Using technologies that are at the forefront of digital innovation, such as 3D facial and 3D graphical authentication solutions, can reliably verify who you are, what you know and what you have.
In no other field is it more important to focus on data privacy than in the authentication process. That is why Switzerland is an excellent breeding ground for companies in this sector. The Swiss company OneVisage, for example, does not monetise users’ data, but works in line with the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). It operates in an important and fast-growing market, in which a lot of companies usually focus on quick success. OneVisage offers a different path with Swiss-grade solutions that strongly protect individuals and their data.
The market is rapidly adopting facial authentication technology thanks to big, disruptive companies like Airbnb and Uber, who use it to verify users on their platforms. With such companies pushing the technology into the mainstream, cost-effective, versatile, highly secure and universal solutions that provide a good user experience and put a strong emphasis on data protection are needed more than ever.
OneVisage focuses on protecting individuals in mid-high value transactions by venturing away from pin codes. Pin codes can be easily stolen and make up a large part of online fraud with important financial consequences. Even a big company like Apple with its service FaceID is not completely secure: if the service fails to recognize a user, the user is prompted to enter a 4 to 6 digit pin code, which is a backdoor to any potential fraudster.
The main challenge is to provide an all-in-one-solution, which is technically challenging to achieve. Different devices come with different platforms, operating systems, sensors and features, so no one should be fooled by marketing campaigns from that claim to have it all figured out. Finding such a solution is a marathon, not a sprint and slowly but steadily reaching intermediate goals will prove more effective over the long term.
At Viva Technology in Paris and Money2020 Europe in Amsterdam, OneVisage will unveil PremierID, which is a 3FA solution excluding passwords and pin codes. This 3D facial biometric solution is ported on a Windows 10 platform and uses a 3D camera: a very important step to make it as accessible as possible. The next step is to port the technology on Linux and embed systems to make it truly universal and inter-operable.
Most people’s perception of facial authentication technology is negative and a company like OneVisage aims to change this. Protecting yourself from identity theft is difficult, and facial technology makes it almost impossible for fraudsters and thieves to succeed. It also makes it easier to verify identities by law enforcement and border control, which can result in faster and more efficient immigration processes. For now, fingerprint recognition is most widely used, but it can easily be replicated as we leave our fingerprints on many objects in our day-to-day lives. A data and privacy protective facial authentication solution is more secure, more efficient and better suited for the digitised world of the 21st century. There is really no reason not to use facial authentication technology; especially if it’s coming from Switzerland.
Article by Christophe Remillet, CEO OneVisage.
In my series “Dialogue Interviews” I discuss these topics with leaders in Switzerland, from our member organisations, digital shapers and the brightest people in the field of technology and innovation.
This time, I talked to Ewa Ming, founder of the Business Innovation Week Switzerland, a multi-location festival that looks at contemporary possibilities for businesses to stay up-to-date with digital developments. At the Business Innovation Week, an exhibition, a conference and a one-week academy put the world of digital innovation into focus.
Nicolas Bürer: You are an expert in digital transformation, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and the initiator of the “Business Innovation Week Switzerland”, how would you rate the state of innovation and digital transformation of Swiss SMEs compared to the most advanced countries in the world (Scandinavia, Canada, Estonia, Australia, etc.)?
Ewa Ming: On a global scale, Switzerland ranks behind our northern neighbors and a few other “digital” countries. It seems that in these countries, people are more rooted in the digital, with the capacity to meet the challenges that new technologies offer. In Switzerland, there are over 600’000 companies, 90% of which have fewer than 250 employees. These companies provide almost 3 million of the total 4.4 million jobs in the country. These SMEs are the backbone of our economy and, with their innovative strength, they contribute significantly to stability and growth. Compared to the leading digital countries, in Switzerland, we need to become faster and more agile in terms of innovation and transformation and more courageous to think outside the box.
Nicolas Bürer: There is a perception that SMEs are not at the forefront of digital transformation. If you look at our current economy, everything seems to be going well with stable growth and low unemployment. Why should SMEs in Switzerland invest in innovation and digital transformation?
Ewa Ming: The good economic numbers should not lure us into resting on our laurels. Change needs to happen for growth and even though it seems like there is no shortage of new ideas, products and business models, leaders should be prepared for radical change. We will not be able to avoid developing processes and productivity firmly rooted in the digital. SMEs have to foster that know-how and learn how to use data for their own businesses, for the market and for customers.
Nicolas Bürer: Who will be the main competitors for Swiss SMEs in the future?
Ewa Ming: Competition is everywhere and is not a matter of size and location. If you want to be a leader, you must be smart and quick. I would like to answer this question with an exciting example: The young Winterthur-based company Deep Impact is a leader in digital face recognition. When it comes to innovation, the management follows a disruptive strategy: a team must bring a good idea in the form of a prototype tested by a target group within a two week framework. The first version of the new offer or product must then be launched within six months – at the latest. It will then be continuously tested and improved on the market. This is fast, maybe too fast, but a pathway to economic success in times of digitalisation.
Nicolas Bürer: How should SMEs approach digital transformation, what specific measures do you recommend to start with today?
Ewa Ming: My mantra for every Swiss SME’s study book is trial & error. Push things forward courageously and with a calculated risk for digital transformation. Companies like Deep Impact do it with facial recognition. We’re also trying to follow this at EMEX Management. After twelve years of SuisseEMEX trade show business for marketeers at Messe Zürich, we are now betting on our new umbrella brand “Business Innovation” with a new setup and format. With the “Business Innovation Week Switzerland”, we focus on the central importance of SMEs for Switzerland’s economy. With this major convention in Zurich, we enable entrepreneurs and employees, future-oriented designers and trendsetters to change their perspectives and experiences in terms of space and content: keynotes, exhibitions, seminars, studio workshops, start-up pitches and company tours provide relevant innovation knowledge and ensure a great deal of networking. Incidentally, Deep Impact will be demonstrating facial recognition at Business Innovation Week. For more information, go to www.businessinnovation.ch.
Ewa Ming: Nicolas, let me ask you a few questions: digitalswitzerland intends to establish the country as a leading digital innovation hub. Not an easy feat. Where would you place Switzerland at the moment in this process?
Nicolas Bürer: If you look at worldwide rankings from different institutions, we rank pretty well, sometimes even very well. For example, the Worldwide Talent Competitiveness Index has ranked Switzerland as number 1 for 5 years. This is a clear indicator that we are doing well in terms of talent development. Also, the startup ecosystem is growing with 30% growth in invested capital that reached 1.25 billion CHF in 2018. There is still a lot of work to do to continue having a prosperous economy and a high standard of living for the next 10 to 20 years. Other innovation hubs in the world are moving very fast.
Ewa Ming: What role does digitalswitzerland play in order to achieve this?
Nicolas Bürer: Our aim is to connect people from different stakeholder groups like academia, business, government, regions and the Swiss population and create awareness for digital transformation. To do so, we develop specific projects in different sectors like politico-economics, startup ecosystem and education. We also foster dialogue with the Swiss public by organising the Digital Day. Our mission is to act as a catalyst for innovation.
Ewa Ming: The perception of digitalisation in Switzerland is very ambivalent: A new scientific survey of Zurich University of Applied Sciences (HWZ) says Swiss SMEs are still “digital dinosaurs”. In contrast Ruedi Noser, a member of digitalswitzerland’s executive committee, says: the Swiss economy produces the most innovation worldwide. How does this fit together?
Nicolas Bürer: Both are true. Most SMEs still need to embrace digital transformation, become more agile and foster new innovation, this is very important for the prosperity of our economy. On the other side, we have a number of companies that produce unmatched innovation. It is not enough to have only 5% of such companies, we have to ensure that the other 95% are sensitised and ready to transform their business models and ways of working. Working together is the only way forward, and that is also why the Business Innovation Week Switzerland is so important.
In parallel to the Digital Summit Switzerland (Digital Gipfel Schweiz), the Websummit took place in Lisbon on the first week of November. Over 70,000 participants from around 160 nations came together at the largest tech conference in Europe: start-ups, investors, corporates, researchers, politicians, location promotion initiatives – all stakeholders from a lively and dynamic innovation and technology ecosystem were present. Based on my impressions from the Websummit, I will attempt to identify what Switzerland can do and what elements are missing to position the country as a leading digital innovation hub, worldwide!
What these two events have in common is that, in times of increased networking, they highlight the need and value of face-to-face meetings. At the Digital Summit Switzerland, Credit Suisse CEO Tidjane Thiam said: “The more digital and complex the world becomes, the more important it is for people to meet in person.” Alexander Karp, the co-founder of the software company Palantir, also confirmed the need for physical meeting places in an increasingly digitized world: “Even in the age of digitization, people still need people to build trust for business.” (Blick article in German)
The Web Summit’s Website lists success stories that emerge from physical Meet-ups: Jamal Hirani, COO from Snatch, a brand marketing startup, with a free to play, augmented reality treasure hunt app, recalls from his Websummit visit in 2016: “We met with Unilever Ventures during Office Hours at the end of Web Summit Day Two. That night, they contacted us to see if we could come and meet their board on Friday. We met Friday lunchtime, and by Monday we had an agreed term sheet.”
The Websummit brings together international participants. Lisbon can present itself as an established hub for innovation and technology and thus position itself internationally. This in turn strengthens Lisbon’s positioning as an international player, making it better known in the tech and innovation community than Switzerland.
If one compares Portugal with Switzerland, however, you can observe that in other elements that are required to create a thriving ecosystem, Switzerland is ahead: We have a larger research network with two leading polytechnic universities EPFL and ETHZ, a much greater density of internationally active companies, and one of the best talent pools in the world. In addition, Switzerland already has a number of established technology and industry clusters, such as the Arc Lémanique, Basel, and Zurich, as well as a number of smaller emerging clusters in the Grisons (tourism), Zug (Blockchain), Sion (energy and mobility), Ticino (fashion and e-commerce) and others. This raises the question as to why Switzerland cannot stand out from other hubs internationally?
Switzerland is poorly represented at international tech- and innovation gatherings. We seldom see Swiss speakers on stage at major conferences.
In 2017, Martin Vetterli, Rector of EPFL, was invited to the Websummit to participate in a panel on education in the digital age. This year there was no Swiss representative on stage. Such visibility would strengthen the image of Switzerland as an international hub.
Despite Switzerland’s ability to find compromise, the players in the Swiss ecosystem (i.e. foundations, accelerators, start-ups, innovation parks, corporates, national and cantonal location subsidies and the Röschtigraben) lack a common vision of how to position Switzerland internationally as a leading digital innovation hub. Switzerland has impressive clusters with top international networks. Unfortunately, these clusters operate separately from each other. An interdisciplinary integration could make it possible for the clusters to benefit more from each other and from each other’s international networks. The aim would be to learn from peers who have already faced similar challenges in different settings.
Another step would be to open up the entire ecosystem (taking all clusters into account) internationally. There are no events in Switzerland that attracts an international tech audience. The Swiss events that I have attended offer great content but don’t attract an international audience that could foster an exchange of experiences and best practices. Top international speakers are exciting, but the challenges many Swiss entrepreneurs face are dated for the very successful entrepreneur from Silicon Valley – it would be more beneficial for Swiss entrepreneurs to talk to peers. The goal should shift to problem-solving approaches instead of looking only for international inspiration.
This could mean creating more meeting opportunities to promote networking between cluster-specific ecosystems. This nationwide and interdisciplinary ecosystem needs to be opened internationally too.
With this objective in mind, digitalswitzerland is delighted to be a partner at the SWISS Pavilion at CES Las Vegas in January 2019. The SWISS Pavilion is organized by Presence Switzerland (PRS) in collaboration with Switzerland Global Enterprise (S-GE), with the support of strategic partners Innosuisse, swissnex, ProHelvetia and digitalswitzerland. It is an essential step towards the integration of different ecosystems across Switzerland.
At digitalswitzerland, we are looking more and more beyond our borders and developing new activities to enhance our international visibility and connectivity. Our aim is to increase awareness of the Swiss innovation ecosystem abroad and to connect and collaborate with other global innovation hubs.
Last week, I joined a panel at the Forum on Inspiring Innovation: Deep Tech organised by Bloomberg Government and Switzerland Global Enterprise. It was a great opportunity to discuss ecosystems, trends in deep technology and characteristics of the Swiss ecosystem.
San Francisco, Berlin and London usually come to mind when we think of technology and innovation ecosystems. New York is more associated with the “solid but old economy”. This impression might need some updating, let me explain why:
Iynna Halilou, Global Programs Manager at Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator NY believes “we will start seeing more tech-focused innovation focused on solving pressing social issues (e.g a broken mass transit system; housing crisis; access to capital for underprivileged communities, immigrants, asylum seekers, refugees etc.). It is not surprising that we see these solutions coming out of New York, the nature of this city, being so diverse, it has always been an example when it comes to leading change and embracing inclusiveness.”
New York is not only an impressive corporate centre but also one of the most promising and exciting tech hubs to watch in the coming years. My special appreciation goes to the Swiss Innovation Hub in New York for providing much of the data on this ecosystem.
According to Switzerland Global Enterprise, there are about 18 Swiss start-ups active in New York City and 29 in the San Francisco Bay area. The actual number could in fact be twice as high. Swiss start-ups in New York raised an average of $11.03 million, with high variances across industries and stages of development. Swiss presence in the New York start-up environment is relatively recent.
A good start, although numbers are still quite low. So why should Swiss start-ups go to New York? Here are some reasons:
According to Caroline Blaser from the Swiss Business Hub New York “New York has one of the world’s strongest financial ecosystems with a growing venture capital and technology scene. With 52 Fortune 500 companies headquartered here, the globally minded business environment offers great opportunities for start-ups to develop their business. In addition, companies find the time zone ideal making it easy to stay connected with their teams and stakeholders in Europe.”
Not everything is perfect in New York though; the tech and digital ecosystem also have some challenges:
I’m convinced that both ecosystems, New York and Switzerland, can benefit from greater synergies. I was impressed by the quality and growth of the New York ecosystem. Switzerland also has strong assets and both hubs could generate higher output by working together. A few suggestions and examples:
Let’s continue exploring new ways of intensifying exchanges between New York and Switzerland. Both ecosystems will benefit from deepening this collaboration. If you have any suggestions on how we can work together in the future, like establishing an official corridor (MoU, etc), please contact me at nicolas@digitalswitzerland.com.
As part of our strategy 2018-2019 at digitalswitzerland, we are developing new activities in the area of international visibility and connectivity. We aim on one side to increase the visibility of the Swiss digital innovation ecosystem abroad, on the other side it is also about connecting with other digital and innovation hubs and developing collaborations. We believe in increasing the attractiveness of the Swiss ecosystem with these international objectives and help our members to also profit from such activities.
But first, we had the opportunity to do two conference visits at the Wolves Summit in Warsaw and the EU Startup Summit in Barcelona. The Wolves Summit is with more than 2’000 participants one of the most important tech conference in Eastern Europe. This summit focuses on tech and innovation, mainly with participants from Eastern Europe. Very positive was the quality of speakers and panellists on stage but also the possibility to conduct many 1:1 meetings during both days, a very efficient way to get to know many interesting people. The EU Startup Summit, now in Barcelona but previously held in Berlin, gave a very good perspective about the Western Europe Tech Ecosystem. Many startupers, investors and accelerators met during one day and showed their perspectives and visions. Main attends were from Spain, France and Germany I would say.
Now what are the insights and interesting matters from both trips and compared with our Swiss digital ecosystem?
Poland is great for building strong IT or industrial products. Good and committed workforce, average cost of producing compared to many other countries. Also, the people have developed a very good sense for product quality. Poland seems to have affinity with the blockchain technology with many startups in this sphere. The ICO topic is also in all mouth, nevertheless uncertainty remains rather high due to lack of clear regulations.
On the other side, and maybe because the market is pretty big with its 38Mio users, majority of startups are not able or not willing to scale internationally. Reasons are mainly due to the fragmented CEE and Europe in general, but also because many startups think that the market is big enough to build successful ventures, which is somewhere true.
Digitalpoland, a similar initiative to digitalswitzerland but in Poland, is doing great progress since their launch about one year ago. Besides developing their member base, they are launching new initiatives (digital shapers, hackathon) and it seems that they have very good traction so far. Bundling forces in this digital revolution is the best answer to deal with current challenges.
Finally, good news for Poland is the fact that the government is investing much money, about €300Mio, in many different existing or new funds to invest in Polish startups. These €300Mio are completed with about €200Mio from the private sector. A very high amount of money which should boost the ecosystem. Although if the structure is different from the Swiss Entrepreneur Fund, the vision is very similar.
By loading the tweet, you agree to Twitter’s privacy policy.
Learn more
In my opinion Spain has a pretty different focus so far. Majority of startups, as I could see, are focus on B2C business model, more consumer goods or consumer services. Of course also with a strong tech in the background, but for sure Spain has a good momentum in consumer-facing business models. Spanish startups, although the country is big enough, tend to quickly go international, either in Western Europe or even in LATAM.
Spain is also lacking Venture Money as we do in Switzerland and startupers have to pitch abroad (Mainly France, UK and Germany) as soon as they raise their Series A, B or C. Also I could not meet any startups in deeptech topics like robotics, IoT, VR, etc and I have not the impression blockchain is a main focus of the tech ecosystem so far.
Anyway, Barcelona acts as magnet in the region with a strong growing startup ecosystem, since many of the startups are consumer-oriented, they are strong in marketing and visibility, helping for sure the entire ecosystem also abroad. Several European VCs are interested in investing in Spanish startups, which shows the current quality growth of the business models.
By loading the tweet, you agree to Twitter’s privacy policy.
Learn more
Switzerland as a tech and innovation hub is rather known and respected when speaking with participants at the conference, but for sure not really appreciated for its quality. People knows at best the Crypto Valley and our affinity to Blockchain, or sometimes our high quality in robotics or deeptech topics in general. Almost no one knows we have raised almost 1Mia in capital for Swiss startups in 2018, positioning the country in the 5th position in Europe. This shows that we have much work ahead in order to strengthen Switzerland’s position and visibility as an innovative and tech hub, especially by explaining and showing our assets.
Stay tuned and subscribe to our Newsletter!
Get the latest digital thinking direct to your inbox. Join more than 14,000 fellow digital enthusiasts for our regular round-up of the latest news, project updates and ideas to inspire.
Sign up
