Conclusion

With a good innovation policy, Switzerland can lay the foundation for long-term prosperity and growth. However, it is also quite possible that a poor innovation policy could do more harm than good. For example, state-imposed industrial policy can lead to inefficiencies and misallocations. This must be absolutely avoided. Even with good intentions, too much government intervention can have an inhibiting effect on innovation. Moreover, with its small domestic market, Switzerland does not operate in a weight class in which massive flows of money could help a technology to achieve a breakthrough. Many political ideas that at first glance appear to promote innovation turn out to be counterproductive on closer examination. Thus, good innovation policy must be "blind" to a certain extent: It must not succumb to the illusion that it already knows the technologies of the future today. This vagueness makes it difficult to sell good innovation policy in the political process. People want to solve today's problems quickly and comprehensively. Instead, goals must be set more modestly and for the long term: The foundations must be laid in an open-ended process to ensure that important problems can be solved in the future with a certain degree of probability. The incubation period from investment in education and research to concrete innovation can be long; moreover, the possibility of failure is an inherent part of this process. The reason is that innovation is not a linear, schematic process. Neither is there a clear differentiation of roles between universities and private industry, nor is a distinction between basic research, application-oriented research and concrete market development practical. Rather, many small pieces of the puzzle must fit together for innovation to occur. The state can improve some of these puzzle pieces and thus hope that someone will add more pieces and combine them correctly so that an idea, indeed a whole picture, emerges. Only this picture represents the innovation that has added value for the customer and our society in general. In the innovation process, therefore, trust must be placed in the functioning of the market economy.

It is also important to realize that many measures have only an indirect impact on the innovative power of a country because they influence its competitiveness. For example, a country's tax system and the level of its tax burden influence its competitiveness and thus have an impact, albeit only indirectly, on its ability to innovate. The seven pillars of innovative capability are intended to provide a rough guideline for everyday political life. Switzerland is currently in a comparatively good starting position. But the international competition never sleeps.

The seven pillars of innovative capability are intended to provide a rough guideline for everyday political life. Switzerland is currently in a comparatively good starting position. But the international competition never sleeps.