Authors: Michael Domeisen, Doris Kündig, Colette Richter
Worldwide there are approximately 4000 location promotion agencies and offices trying to attract international operating businesses and organizations to open up branches in their specific areas.
According to OSEC Switzerland is The international Management Gateway to Europe. More than 800 North American companies with a presence in Switzerland are located in the main business regions between German, French and Italian speaking Switzerland.
The biggest challenge of location promotion for a region is attracting internationally operating companies to move their (European) Headquarters, research and development offices, financial offices or IP offices to a certain destination – in this case Winterthur.
Economic development refers to the effort of organizations like Location Promotion Winterthur which offer material or financial support to stimulate the economy in a given region. If the promotion is successful, promotional expenditure is recouped through increased employment, tax revenues and the potential profitability to investors of the location.
In our case study we concentrated on economic development with mainly potential US companies. According to Martin Naville, CEO AmCham the US is the largest economy worldwide. US companies (i.e. multinational companies) are highly competitive, managing their operations from a global perspective.
After carrying out a SWOT analysis of our chances to attract US companies to the Winterthur region we came to the following conclusions:
- Promoting Winterthur as a business location in the US has to be based on Switzerland and Zurich as these are brands which are known in the US (Brand management). For a relatively small location like Winterthur it is important to have partners like OSEC, Swiss Innovation on a national level and Greater Zurich Area on a regional level.
- We needed to focus on what we are good at. Very important is to consider the existing clusters in the region – machine industry (incl. mechatronics), medical technology and ICT. Clusters can give renewed emphasis to the transectoral, practical promotion of innovation.
- We defined the targeted areas (North/East US and California) where in the US these industries are located and decided to initially concentrate our efforts on these regions considering our limited financial and human resources.
We are convinced that due to the advantages Winterthur has to offer, we will be able to find potential US enterprises willing to locate themselves in Winterthur und use Winterthur as their European hub, R&D HQ or financial office. Location Winterthur – Your key to innovation!