“No need for visionary gurus”

Never before have so many business ideas been submitted: with 239 entries, the start-up competition venture set a new record in its ninth outing. At the awards ceremony for the first round held at ETH Zurich on Wednesday evening, the ten best business ideas were announced and go through to the next round. Eight of the ten winning ideas stemmed from a federal institute of technology, including three from ETH Zurich.

While many business ideas were still geared towards information technology and Smartphone apps in last year’s “venture”, this year the pendulum swung more in favour of biotechnology and medical technology – including the three ETH-Zurich spin-offs that made it into the Top Ten.

Antidotes and three-dimensional cell structures

The business idea for the spin-off Versantis was born at ETH Zurich’s Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences. The young company has developed a novel antidote that can rapidly remove toxins from the body in the event of a drug overdose, for example. The ReHaptix team, which already won “venture kick”, a competition for young entrepreneurs, back in December 2013, developed a rapid and reliable test at ETH Zurich to assess the motor function of arms and hands for use during rehabilitation after strokes or neurological diseases. And the company Cell Spring also originated at ETH Zurich: it has devised a rapid, cost-effective method for developing 3D cell structures to test medication in the lab, thereby enabling more reliable and efficient clinical trials than the more common two-dimensional cell structures.

“Innovation comes from the bottom”

Guest speaker Severin Schwan, who has been CEO of the pharmaceutical company Roche since 2008, also expressed his delight at this year’s trend towards biotechnology and medical technology among the entries: “There is a tremendous need for innovation in our industry: two thirds of all known diseases are still untreatable.” Visibly delighted to have the opportunity to talk about innovation, Schwan referred to it as one of his “dearest, favourite topics” and spoke enthusiastically about the leadership principles he uses to promote innovation within the Roche Group.

One of these principles states that you should “be wary of external advisors and visionary leaders” as a company. According to the top Austrian manager, consultancy firms rarely produce much more than average optimisations from the overall external perspective and certainly no ground-breaking ideas. The problem with “visionary leaders” is that they have effectively monopolised the role of the think tank as “gurus” and thus inhibit bold lateral thinking among the staff. “However, innovation comes from the bottom, not the top,” says Schwan, which is why it is also important to celebrate unsuccessful projects with your employees and a bottle of bubbly every once in a while – to show that we should never stop venturing into unchartered territory.

Glycart Biotechnology: a case in point

The ten small fledgling companies that will be competing for CHF 60,000 in prize money in the next round of “venture” should not lose sight of their visions and press ahead with their business plans accordingly. Or to put it another way: the founders can still afford to be little “gurus”. And in most cases it will be some time before the companies reach anything like the size of Roche and have to start thinking about decentralised management structures that promote innovation. One example of the path a successful start-up might take was mentioned several times on Wednesday evening: the company Glycart Biotechnology from Schlieren. Five years after it won “venture” in 2000, Roche bought the firm for CHF 235 Mio.