Innovaud CEO Patrick Barbey: ‘We want to bring added value to the innovation ecosystem’

15.12.2021 07:01, Isabelle Mitchell

Innovaud is the innovation and investment promotion agency for the canton of Vaud, in Western Switzerland. The organization supports tech-oriented companies in developing their businesses and carrying out innovation projects and assists foreign companies wanting to establish themselves in Vaud. Since 2013, Innovaud has helped create more than 260 startups in the region. To learn more about its mission, its collaboration with Venturelab, and the goals for 2022 and beyond, we talked to Patrick Barbey, the CEO of Innovaud.

Patrick, what is Innovaud’s mission? 
Innovaud is a one-stop-shop for innovators, the founders of startups, scale-ups or SMEs, or the business leaders of larger companies. We help them navigate and understand Vaud’s innovation ecosystem and connect them with the right value-added partners. In this regard, we work closely with other support organizations such as SPEI [Service de la promotion de l’économie et de l’innovation], FIT [Fondation pour l’Innovation Technologique], platinn, GGBa [Greater Geneva Bern area], S-GE [Switzerland Global Enterprise], and Venturelab, to name just a few. Innovaud also collaborates closely with Vaud’s technology parks that encourage synergies between innovative companies by pooling local infrastructure and technical skills.

As the director of Innovaud, I am responsible for managing the organization, but I am also very eager to learn from our local innovation ecosystem and explore other innovation hubs around the world, to understand their differences and get inspired.

What are some challenges and opportunities you face? 
The innovation ecosystem is growing tremendously in Switzerland and in Vaud in particular. More and more startups are emerging, large companies use technology daily to develop innovative products or services, and new programs and actors join the ecosystem. As opposed to eight years ago when Innovaud was created, our challenge today is to focus on putting our effort where it has the most impact. We want to bring added value to the innovation ecosystem. We are doing so by finding new ways to support entrepreneurs while remaining complementary with the work of other support organizations with which we work closely together. 

On top of this local growth, our region has also become a significant innovation hub at the European level, with a worldwide acknowledged expertise in the fields of life sciences and health; ICT and digital technologies, in particular cybersecurity or trust; food and nutrition; drones and aerospace; energy and the environment; or sports, to name just a few. This puts Vaud in a position to attract very interesting international companies that see great examples of local companies thriving in those domains via the promotion that we and our partners, such as Venturelab, make outside our borders.

How would you describe the startup environment in Vaud? 
Vaud is the third most populous canton in Switzerland and benefits from an unparalleled academic density with an impressive number of high-tech research institutions—EPFL [Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne], HEIG-VD [Haute Ecole d'Ingénierie et de Gestion du Canton de Vaud], UNIL [Université de Lausanne], or CHUV [Centre hospitalier universitaire vaudois]—that train top talents. On the other hand, our canton is also home to high-level education in management and design with schools such as EHL [Ecole hôtelière de Lausanne], HEC Lausanne[Faculty of Business and Economics of the University of Lausanne], and ECAL [ École cantonale d’art de Lausanne]. The combination of those precious skills leads to a very fertile ground for startups and young innovative companies to flourish. Together with this academic concentration, Vaud also counts numerous large companies and multinationals that nourish the area’s economic vitality.
 
You have been with Innovaud for almost 10 years. How would you summarize this decade of innovation in Switzerland and in the canton of Vaud? 
A decade of growth and expansion! The past 10 years include the emergence of several Vaud-based startups that reached a valuation of CHF 1 billion or more, such as SOPHiA Genetics, MindMaze, or Nexthink. More and more entrepreneurs choose to take risks by founding a startup or repeating the adventure with a new idea. The size of the investment rounds has also been growing, and the region is more attractive than ever to investors. For the year 2020, Swiss startups received CHF 2.1 billion in investment while Vaud-based young companies attracted CHF 409,1 million with a record of financing rounds.

With the arrival of new investors, financial support has improved as well. To name but one, FIT has significantly expanded its financial tools to adapt to the ecosystem’s transformation and cover wider fields. In the last decade, Vaud has crossed a new threshold and entered a new league; and the challenge now is to manage all these new opportunities.

Let’s talk about Innovaud’s collaboration with Venturelab. What role does Innovaud play in the Venturelab programs, especially for the Venture Leaders programs? 
Ever since the very beginning of Innovaud in 2013, we have had strong ties with Venturelab. The programs offered by Venturelab bring high value to Swiss startups, so we are happy to promote those to the entrepreneurs we meet. We always make sure that Vaud’s best tech innovators can take part in Venturelab’s programs. As a member of the Venture Leaders’ jury and a long-time supporter of Venturelab, we join the teams’ trips on a regular basis, as we feel it is important to support them all along the way. 

Among the several Venture Leaders trips that I joined, I particularly remember the trip to China a few years ago, where we got to visit several cities and innovation hubs. I learned a lot about the Chinese market and startup ecosystem. And this year in London, we had a lot of fun sharing a cheese fondue in the middle of Soho!

Why do Innovaud and Venturelab collaborate?
Innovaud is very focused on high-tech and deeptech. Venturelab’s programs resonate well with our mission. Besides, with an ever-growing innovation ecosystem, it is more and more important to stay connected with other strongly innovative regions, and Venturelab is a key partner in this respect.

With 2021 coming to an end: What are Innovaud’s plans for 2022? 
With our Scale Up Vaud program launched in 2016, Innovaud has supported an increasing number of promising companies, some of which have raised several hundred million. To help entrepreneurs address the challenges of high growth, Innovaud and IMD have come up with a new program—LeadiNNg to Scale-Up—designed to propel Vaud-based tech companies to the next stage of their development. The first edition of the program was sold out in a flash!

Besides supporting companies born in the canton, Innovaud’s other mission is to guide and help foreign companies in the process of settling in Vaud. In 2022, we want to leverage the growing success of our key innovation sectors by bonding with innovation hubs abroad. We are now working on building bridges with foreign companies in these fields, which might lead to them setting up in Vaud. Now, we are especially active in the UK, Canada, and Russia.