Startup Selection Switzerland
Ranking Categories › Academic Selection
ACADEMIC SELECTION  ·  CATEGORY 06

Which Swiss universities truly
foster entrepreneurship?

An independent ranking of 26 Swiss universities, universities of applied sciences and research institutes. Measured against the HEInnovate framework — with one key addition: the voices of spin-off founders and programme alumni count for 35% of every institution's score.

Validate your institution profile  →

For TTOs and rectorates  ·  pre-filled by an independent team  ·  you validate  ·  ~30 minutes

or first browse the three discipline rankings

HEInnovate-aligned (EU-OECD) · Spin-off founders + programme alumni surveyed · 26 institutions independently pre-researched

Three institution types.
Three separate rankings.

An ETH cannot be fairly compared to a university of applied sciences. Each type has a different research-to-spin-off pathway, different output volumes, and different ecosystem roles. Three independent rankings with thresholds calibrated to each type's real data.

ⓘ No cross-type comparison. A Diamond UAS is a Diamond UAS — not "above" or "below" a Diamond Research Institute. Each discipline has its own calibrated thresholds and minimum review requirements.
🎓
Universities
12 Institutions

Research-driven, deep-tech spin-offs, full academic spectrum

Min.
12 reviews total  ·  at least 4 spin-off founders

ETH · EPFL · UZH · UniBas · UniBE · UNIGE · UNIL · HSG · USI · UniNE · UniFR · UniLU

🏛️
Universities of Applied Sciences
9 Institutions

Application-oriented, SME proximity, regional anchoring

Min.
10 reviews total  ·  at least 3 spin-off founders

ZHAW · FHNW · BFH · OST · HSLU · HES-SO · SUPSI · FHGR · ZHdK

🔬
Research Institutes
5 Institutions

Frontier research, highly selective spin-offs, patent-driven

Min.
8 reviews total  ·  at least 3 spin-off founders

Empa · PSI · Eawag · WSL · CSEM

THE CORE DIFFERENTIATOR

35% of every score comes from the people
institutions exist to serve.

HEInnovate measures what institutions have and do. We add what HEInnovate cannot: what founders and alumni actually experienced. Two separate surveys — one for spin-off founders, one for programme alumni — are combined into one Founder Voice dimension.

FOUNDER VOICE · 35% OF SELECTION SCORE
Two surveys. One dimension. Weighted 60 / 40.

Spin-off founders speak about the research commercialisation experience — IP terms, TTO quality, the real path from lab to company. Programme alumni speak about education quality — what changed after the Pioneer Fellowship, the Innogrant, or the START Accelerator. Both voices are anonymous, aggregated, and independently verified.

SPIN-OFF FOUNDERS · 60%
People who turned research into a company

Researchers, PhD students, and postdocs who founded a company based on IP from this institution. They are identified independently via Crunchbase and the Startup-Switzerland database — preventing the survival bias that comes from institution-curated lists. Your TTO can nominate founders we may have missed.

21%
OF TOTAL SELECTION SCORE
Did the institution actively support or hinder your spin-off journey?
How fair were the IP licensing terms with the TTO?
Would you have founded without this institution?
Was the TTO helpful or bureaucratic?
Would you recommend other researchers here to spin out?
PROGRAMME ALUMNI · 40%
People who completed institution-owned programmes

Participants of programmes owned, funded, and operated by the institution — ETH Pioneer Fellowship, EPFL Innogrant, HSG START Accelerator, BFH Capacity Accelerator, etc. Affiliated programmes (Wyss Zurich, Be-Advanced, BaselArea programmes, Microcity) are excluded to maintain clean institutional attribution.

14%
OF TOTAL SELECTION SCORE
Did the programme change the trajectory of your startup?
Was the mentoring quality high enough to matter?
Did the programme open doors — investors, clients, talent?
Was the effort-to-value ratio worth it?
Would you recommend this programme to other founders?
35%
TOTAL FOUNDER VOICE WEIGHT
60 / 40
SPIN-OFFS TO PROGRAMME ALUMNI
100%
ANONYMOUS & AGGREGATED
Founders who completed a programme and later spun out count once — as spin-off founders. The spin-off is the stronger outcome signal. Double-counting the same person would inflate scores for institutions where a small group of prominent founders appears in both surveys.

HOW IT WORKS

Three data sources.
Five dimensions. One ranking per discipline.

Institutional data compiled independently from public sources, anonymous founder voice from two independent surveys, and expert assessment from the Swiss ecosystem — each source feeds its own dimensions. Single-layer model, no double weighting. Data points that are identical across all 26 institutions are excluded from scoring as they cannot differentiate.

3 sources
Institution · Founder · Expert
→
5 indices
Voice · Track · Capacity · …
→
Score 0–100
within your discipline only
→
Discipline status
Silver → Diamond
35%
Founder Voice — the largest single dimension, combining spin-off founders (60%) and programme alumni (40%)
3 rankings
Universities, UAS, Research Institutes — never compared across types
Empirically calibrated
Bucketing from the upper quartile of real Swiss data per institution type

Weighting of the five dimensions

Founder Voice (35%) is the strongest dimension. Combined with Track Record (22%), objective spin-off output and subjective founder experience together account for more than half the score.

Founder Voice
Spin-off founders (60%) + programme alumni (40%) · anonymous & independently aggregated
35%
Spin-off Track Record
Number of spin-offs created, active spin-offs, patents licensed — verified against public databases
22%
Entrepreneurial Capacity & Education
TTO existence and quality, entrepreneurship programmes, infrastructure, curriculum depth, student participation
20%
Knowledge Exchange & Ecosystem
Industry partnerships, investor engagement, regional role — rated by independent experts from the Swiss ecosystem
13%
Funding & Resources
Innovation budget, direct grants to founders, grant volume and frequency
10%

Same dimensions, different thresholds — calibrated from real Swiss data

All five dimensions apply across all three disciplines. But item-level bucketing thresholds are tuned per institution type using the upper quartile of actual data from all 26 pre-researched institutions.

SPIN-OFFS (5Y) FOR 10 PTS
University: 100+
UAS: 20+
Research Inst: 25+
PATENTS LICENSED FOR 10 PTS
University: 100+
UAS: 20+
Research Inst: 30+
INNOVATION BUDGET FOR 10 PTS
University: 20M+
UAS: 5M+
Research Inst: 10M+

THE FRAMEWORK

Built on HEInnovate.
Strengthened with founder voice.

The EU-OECD HEInnovate framework defines what it means to be an Entrepreneurial University across five pillars. We adopt these pillars and add what HEInnovate cannot measure from desk research alone: what founders and alumni actually experienced.

HEINNOVATE · EU-OECD JOINT INITIATIVE
Entrepreneurial impact is more than spin-off counts.

A truly entrepreneurial university aligns its leadership, organisation, education, industry partnerships, and societal output. Our methodology maps five HEInnovate pillars to five scoring dimensions — then sharpens the result with direct founder feedback that no institutional self-report can replace.

PILLAR 1
Leadership & Governance
PILLAR 2
Organisational Capacity
PILLAR 3
Entrepreneurial Teaching
PILLAR 4
Knowledge Exchange
PILLAR 5
Impact & Society

Selection Status per discipline

These four tiers apply independently within each discipline.

S
Silver
70.0 – 79.9
G
Gold
80.0 – 89.9
P
Platinum
90.0 – 94.9
D
Diamond
≥ 95.0

HOW TO PARTICIPATE

Four steps. Pre-filled for you.
Your TTO validates.

Unlike other Selection categories, institutions don't build profiles from scratch. An independent research team pre-fills the institutional data from public sources. Your TTO validates in 30 minutes. The dual founder survey runs in parallel — independently of you.

1
Your profile is pre-filled

An independent research team compiles your institutional data from annual reports, Crunchbase, Innosuisse records, and public sources. You receive the draft via your TTO contact for review.

No effort for you at this stage
2
TTO validates and corrects

Review pre-filled answers, correct inaccuracies, complete missing items. Sensitive figures (exact budgets) stay confidential — only ranges appear publicly.

~30 minutes for your TTO
3
Dual founder survey runs independently

Spin-off founders are identified independently via Crunchbase and the Startup-Switzerland database. Your TTO nominates additional founders we may have missed. Programme alumni are contacted via your programme records. Both surveys run 6–8 weeks.

~10 minutes for nominations
4
Score, report, and badge

Your final score with per-dimension breakdown and HEInnovate pillar mapping arrives before public release. Nothing goes live without your TTO sign-off.

Public release: October 2026

DATA INTEGRITY

Independent. Verifiable. DSG-compliant.

Six promises:
✓ Hosting in Switzerland, DSG- and GDPR-compliant
✓ Founder and alumni feedback reported in aggregated form only
✓ Quantitative claims cross-checked against Crunchbase, Innosuisse, SECA
✓ Sensitive financial data stays confidential — ranges only in public profile
✓ Institution can request profile delisting at any time
✓ No third-party transfer, no commercial use of institutional data
Read the full data charter →

FREQUENTLY ASKED

What rectorates and TTOs
question critically.

About 30 minutes for your TTO to validate the pre-filled institutional data, and roughly 10 minutes to nominate additional spin-off founders. Everything else — survey dispatch, reminders, aggregation, scoring — is handled independently. The dual founder survey runs 6–8 weeks in parallel. Public Selection Status is released in October 2026.
Spin-off founders are the strongest signal — they represent the full research-to-company journey and make up 60% of the Founder Voice score. But most institutions run programmes (Pioneer Fellowship, Innogrant, START Accelerator) where many participants never formally spin out, yet their experience of the institution's entrepreneurial culture is equally valid and equally relevant to researchers considering a spin-off. Programme alumni (40%) capture this broader culture that spin-off counts alone cannot see.
Bucketing thresholds are calibrated to the upper quartile per discipline — not absolute numbers. ETH's 150+ spin-offs in 5 years and Uni Luzern's 3+ spin-offs each convert to discipline-relative scores. More importantly, 35% of the score comes from Founder Voice — where a smaller institution with excellent TTO support and fair IP terms can score equally as high as ETH. Volume alone does not determine the tier.
Programmes owned, funded, and operated by the institution — directly branded under it. Examples: ETH Pioneer Fellowship, EPFL Innogrant, EPFL Ignition Grant, HSG START Accelerator, BFH Capacity Accelerator, FHNW Startup Academy. Affiliated programmes (Wyss Zurich, Be-Advanced, BaselArea programmes, Microcity) are excluded to maintain clean institutional attribution. They may still appear as supporting evidence in the Capacity & Education dimension.
They count once — as a spin-off founder. The spin-off is the stronger outcome signal and subsumes the programme experience. Double-counting would inflate scores for institutions where a small prominent group appears in both surveys.
Two data points are identical across all 26 Swiss institutions — the typical time to spin-off creation (12–24 months for all) and formal Innosuisse anchoring (yes for all). An item that doesn't differentiate cannot contribute to a meaningful ranking score. Including them would dilute the items that do differentiate institutions. Both remain visible in the public profile as qualitative context.

VALIDATE YOUR INSTITUTION

Validate your institution profile.

Your institutional data is pre-filled from public sources. Your TTO validates in 30 minutes. Spin-off founders and programme alumni speak anonymously. You control the publication step.

Submit TTO contact   →

~30 minutes for your TTO  ·  DSG- & GDPR-compliant  ·  October 2026 release

12
UNIVERSITIES
9
UAS
5
RESEARCH INSTITUTES