shelve the usual

Ms Kehl, as President and CEO of the SFS, you helped shape the Swiss fintech scene. In your opinion, what are the criteria that fintech companies use here besides tax advantages?
The factors are manifold. Certainly, the business environment plays a major role. Where can I find business partners and customers? Where can I gain access to the market? This also includes the employees. After all, I have to be able to grow from my location. However, the job market is international, which means that I have to be able to hire international talent and the location has to be attractive to them.

Bureaucracy is another important factor; regulatory hurdles that are too high can eat up a lot of money and time. Both are in short supply in startups. I think the cost of living and access to capital and investors are also decisive factors in the choice of location. Finally, so-called soft factors such as lifestyle and culture also count. It's not for nothing that cities with a certain international flair and 'startup spirit' attract more and more startup companies.

You have also praised location initiatives such as the increasingly prominent blockchain campaign from Zug, the self-proclaimed Crypto Valley. Are you generally positive about such fintech regions?
A kind of cluster formation is absolutely not a new phenomenon; where successful companies are located, suppliers, customers and partners settle. This is true for traditional industries such as construction as well as for crypto platforms. It's great when location initiatives show commitment and send out signals that they stand by these industries. Zug has recognised that the financial sector is changing and that fintech/crypto offers new opportunities.

When you give speeches to associations, you often point out that digitalisation is not taken seriously enough. Do you also see gaps that Swiss companies should fill?
For me, this is not just about companies. Digitisation is a task for society as a whole and, above all, for culture. However, if we want to focus on companies first, recent studies have shown that it is not so much the technical challenges that stand in the way of successful change, but rather the prevailing corporate culture. We must be prepared to discard old patterns and leave the beaten track.

"Putting aside what you're used to and learning something new."

In this context, it is important not simply to replace or remove employees, but to involve them in the change process. Here again, the whole of society is called upon.

How do start-up companies motivate their people?
Lifelong learning is becoming more and more important, and we have to say goodbye to the idea that we are virtually finished once we have completed an apprenticeship or a degree. At every stage of our careers and at every age, we will always be starting over again, putting aside what we are used to and learning something new. We need to address people's fears and put a positive spin on lifelong learning by awakening desire and curiosity and encouraging them.

One reads that the Zug region is not only home to universities and around 20 startups in the blockchain context. Zug always tolerates new crypto funds. Do you perhaps also see a kind of one-sidedness (keyword: reputation risk) if crypto offerings are less well received once?
The economy is in a constant state of flux and you have to keep a constant eye on developments. I come from

Germany, where the automotive industry has been a mainstay of the economy for decades. But what happens if Germany fails to make the leap away from oil-independent vehicles, for example, while China produces autonomous electric vehicles?

"Entrepreneurship is a quintessentially Swiss virtue."

- Or take the Finnish Nokia, which dominated the mobile phone market for a long time and then slept through the step to the smartphone.

Today's economy is globally networked and in a constant state of flux. Every location must find the right industry that is important to it, keep it fit for the future and constantly adapt to change. This is a great, but also exciting challenge.

Apart from the above extreme cases, what would Switzerland have to do better to become more attractive for startups?
Entrepreneurship is a quintessentially Swiss virtue. This has given rise to many successful companies, some of which can now look back on a long history. In recent decades, people have rested a little on the success of the old founders and made themselves comfortable in the structures of the existing large companies. Today, however, we are in the midst of a new founding era in which the cards are being completely reshuffled.

Do you have a kind of patent remedy for new initiatives?
We need to rediscover the old Swiss entrepreneurial spirit. This is also a cultural issue. We should put less emphasis on the gapless curriculum vitae and instead value individual initiative more. A start-up shouldn't only gain attention when it has either grown to become a corporate or has been bought up by one. Founding a company means starting small and sometimes failing. We lead the global innovation index, i.e. when it comes to the number of patents. It's time for Switzerland's innovative minds to dare to put their ideas on the ground commercially.

Digital platforms and technologies are changing economic structures. Where could further breakthroughs occur?
In the areas of artificial intelligence and machine learning, we are just at the beginning. It will be very exciting here in the next few years.