E-business in Switzerland – Is the pond deep enough?

Freelancing at bitzli.com, I came across thousands of Swiss websites and naturally quite a few businesses online. Now, there is no doubt that e-business in Switzerland has tremendous potential, considering the perfect postal system, trust into financial transactions online, the high level of internet penetration as well as high standard of living. However, I wonder if at a cultural level the Swiss will be capable of connecting online and develop sharing communities besides Facebook, where one had “no choice” but to join at some point? Is the pond of participating Swiss citizens deep enough? Will the Swiss internet finally pick up steam? Never wondered why Blogging is a profession in the US while in Switzerland blogging has almost 0 commercial value? Would it not be ironic for the social internet to fail in this wonderful direct democracy?

Digital divide in Switzerland? No way, right?

The expression “digital divide” has been originally used for describing the lack of education in IT related topics which led to a competitive disadvantage for the population in Africa for example, in terms of accessing free information.
Interestingly, the aging population in Switzerland will be having a hard time switching to digital publishing. Where in the US at least one family member is blogging or active in ecommerce, in Switzerland people still consider a website to be a major project that requires major resources to be realized. Now this is about to change. I am excited to see if and how content management systems such as WordPress will be taking over the country.

I have started a humble link collection for those who are interested in getting into ebusiness or into digital publishing

What’s the problem in Switzerland in terms of business?

It seems the mentality in Switzerland has been messed with for so long that people hesitate to dream and imagine. Trying a business idea, be it online or in the physical world has to be accomplished on a solo trip, since convincing people taking a little bit of risk is difficult and time consuming, not to say impossible. But yes, why should one invest time into new ideas, when average salaries are high enough to stop thinking outside the box.

5 years of stability were interesting – what’s next?

Another phase comes to end and a feeling of nostalgia spreads already. Five years in Geneva had its ups and down. However,  whenever you stick around for too long, you begin to feel the limits of life, which can be a scary experience. So in order to counter that psychological development, I decided to make a longer trip to Russia, my place of birth. Let’s see what happens.