Innovation is a fundamental driver of growth and key to tackling the many megatrends our economies and societies face, including digitalisation, climate and demographic change. Each of these trends, and indeed more generally, economic shocks, affect regions in different ways. While many urban regions, for example, are able to quickly adapt, and leverage their agglomeration effects, rural regions often struggle to adapt. They also typically lag in innovation creation and up-take, measured by patent-intensity and R&D technological innovation. However, that narrow view may not fully reflect the notion of innovation for rural areas. As such, policies that focus on this narrow view may not take advantage of the full potential of rural places areas. This report adopts a broader perspective and provides analysis and guidance on how innovation can support regional and rural development in Switzerland.

With strong entrepreneurship rates, leading universities and research institutions, a competitive market and policies that enable the free flow of individuals and encourage firm linkages between territories, Switzerland is a leader of innovation among OECD countries, with an exemplary and advanced regional innovation strategy consisting of six regional innovation systems (RIS).

This introductory chapter sets out the report’s overall assessment and recommendations. Switzerland is one of the leading OECD countries, systematically performing highly on innovation, yet, some areas within Switzerland still face acute challenges. To support Switzerland in maintaining its high level of innovation and activate innovation in rural regions, innovation stakeholders in the federal system of Switzerland need to continue to reinforce collaboration and co-ordination mechanisms in delivering innovation and entrepreneurial support.

Switzerland is an innovation leader, with a long history of federalism, regional collaboration and bottom-up consensus-building. While several regions in Switzerland are top international performers in innovation, rural regions are on average lagging behind. This underlines the importance of understanding innovation through a rural lens and providing support to entrepreneurs, firms and innovators across rural regions. This chapter sets the scene for the report. It outlines the structure of rural regions, discusses trends in innovation across all types of regions, and identifies challenges in promoting well-being and adapting to changing societies.

This chapter starts with an overview of the policy landscape for rural innovation and identifies drivers and barriers to innovation in rural Switzerland. Specifically, it investigates if local, regional and national framework conditions are conducive to and account for the specific characteristics of rural innovation using evidence from the case study areas around the regional innovation systems (RIS) in Basel-Jura, Central Switzerland and Western Switzerland. It also makes suggestions to address bottlenecks in the delivery of innovation support, broaden the concept of innovation, create a culture of experimentation, strengthen rural-urban linkages and improve skills shortages for rural innovation.

This chapter describes the Swiss agricultural innovation system (AIS). It identifies the actors in agricultural innovation and their roles, describes the main trends in public investments in agricultural research and development (R&D), discusses the impact of agricultural policies on AIS, and describes initiatives to foster agri-food innovation. It also depicts institutional co‑ordination between regional innovation systems (RIS) and the Federal Office for Agriculture’s (FOAG) advisory services at the canton level.