Start-up 2014 a canton ticino’s record

Start-up 2014 a Canton Ticino’s record.

Gianluca Colombo, Executive MBA and AMC Director

A record number of companies were created in 2014 in Switzerland: 41’588 companies were registered last year in the Swiss Commercial Register against 40’829 of 2013.

Sometimes we take almost for granted that Ticino is a paradise for new businesses: moderate tax burden, quality of the local and cross-border workforce, fair labor relations, and efficiency of public administration. There is much truth in these assumptions, although not all are strong elements of attraction for new businesses, which, for example, have a short to medium-term high income and are therefore little sensitive to the tax advantages. An AMC research, supported by the Swiss-American Chamber of Commerce, has tried to go beyond the assumptions to find in the data if the Ticino can be defined as an entrepreneurial society.

The happy definition of David Audretsch identifies a country in which the condition to undertake new activities private, public and mixed, it is not an exceptional fact that emerges in the midst of many difficulties, but it will spread to various sections of the population becoming almost the model of collective action. This is not to celebrate the profit, but the application of creativity to the solution of problems in both the private and social. And it is obvious that an entrepreneurial society sees the birth of new businesses as a clear indicator of its success.

The data from Ticino are very good, but need to be interpreted. We are in first place in Switzerland the number of new businesses founded in relation to the population, but we are second in number of failures.
The high rate of entrepreneurial activity is partly due to the phenomenon of cross-border workers. It is quite fragile and new businesses are most at risk of failure. Ticino’s new companies are also smaller than in the rest of Switzerland and for this reason, perhaps, the failure rate is higher. Finally, again because of smaller-sized business, the impact of new businesses on the GDP is lower than in other cantons. Is Ticino an Entrepreneurial society, but fragile? The conclusion is premature.

Research has especially found that, despite being present in Canton Ticino, all the elements and support systems for new businesses, there is poor coordination between them, then disappearing almost completely the effect of the system. A potential entrepreneur, maybe younger, she decides to give birth to her firm in Ticino has not the impression to be inserted in a clear process of accompaniment in which the various public and private stakeholders participate in a coordinated manner. Instead, the impression is to be inserted in a game of monopoly where often you back to square one.

And ‘This is the main shortcoming observed. It is also said that Ticino lacks investors specialized in financing new businesses. It ‘s true, even if something is changing. But it is also true that investors prefer to invest in companies that are located in entrepreneurial societies, because, in these environments, companies are growing faster and are less likely to fail.

We believe that USI – Executive MBA plays a fundamental role in transforming Ticino in an entrepreneurial society.