Swiss Biotech Report 2006

JOINING FORCES... >>13NETWORKS In order to make the Swiss biotech industrymore innovative and responsive to the market,a number of universities, companies, trade associationsand the CTI, the national innovation andpromotion agency, have joined forces in recentyears to develop various projects and competencenetworks.Thanks to the pharmaceutical industry’s long-standinghistory in Switzerland, the country has an outstandingnetwork of suppliers as well as innovativebasic research institutes at the universities. The universitiesof applied sciences, which have really succeededin establishing themselves over the last fewyears, have likewise developed a very good reputationin the area of life sciences. In order to utilisethese strengths even more effectively, various initiativeshave recently been formed with the aim of improvingnetworking between the various players inthe Swiss biotech sector.NATIONAL COMPETENCE NETWORKSBy establishing national competence networks likeSwiss Biotechnet (see article on pages 14–15) andSwiss Foodnet, the national innovation and promotionagency CTI has played a very active role in shapingapplied life science research and development atboth the traditional universities and the universities ofapplied sciences. This has made it possible to implementmany high-quality projects and attract a mountingnumber of interested business partners. Anothermilestone was the formation in 1998 of a powerful andeffective professional association for the bioindustry– another project in which the CTI was also activelyinvolved. Thanks to its goal-oriented and efficientmanagement and a growing membership, today’sSwiss Biotech Association is becoming ever more dynamicand important in stature, while also establishinga political lobby for the biotech sector.Since 2004, the Swiss Biotech Association and SwissBiotechnet have also been involved in a joint CTIproject entitled “Industry solution for simplified knowledgemanagement in biotechnology”.The CTI set up a knowledge and technology transfer(KTT) system in 2005. This structural tool is designedto provide the biotech sector with important newideas and fresh impetus. In future, technology transfershould function according to a push-pull model sothat the business community (primarily small andmedium-sized enterprises) can be more actively integratedinto the process than before.A good example of this is the “w 6 consortium” whosemembers include not only the Swiss Biotech Association,which has taken on the role of industry pool forthe life sciences, but also partners from industry andscience. The aim of w 6 is to strengthen technologytransfer between universities and business in order tofurther improve existing activities and integrate themmore effectively into a network.The consortium has therefore set itself the followingstrategic goals:• To support existing projects and innovative modelsthat stimulate the pull process; to dismantle barriers,particularly between small and medium-sizedcompanies (the business community in general) andthe universities; and to promote the push process.