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Good practice Imported

ETH transfer — ETH Zurich Spin-off & Technology Transfer Office

Switzerland · Zurich · See the Switzerland profile · See the Zurich profile

Evidence: Observational / pre–post Top 65% 62/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

ETH Zurich's technology-transfer office has produced 583 spin-offs since 1973 with a 93% five-year survival rate, but its outlier funding base limits how transferable the model is to less-resourced regions.

583
Total spin-offs produced since 1973 (by end 2023)
43
New spin-offs, record year (2023)
93% vs ~68%
Five-year survival rate, 1998-2007 ETH spin-off cohort vs. Swiss start-ups generally
81%
Ten-year survival rate, 1998-2007 ETH spin-off cohort
~425,000,000 CHF
Capital raised by ETH spin-offs (2024)
ETH transfer — ETH Zurich Spin-off & Technology Transfer Office

Details

Maturity
Established
Promoter
ETH Zurich (ETH transfer office)
Period
1973–present
Region (NUTS)
CH04
Keywords
university tech transfer, patent licensing, deep-tech spin-offs

Context

ETH transfer is ETH Zurich's institutional technology-transfer office, handling invention disclosure, patenting, licensing and spin-off creation, with revenue-sharing between inventors, labs and the university; ETH Zurich has tracked spin-off formation since 1973.

Results

By end-2023, ETH Zurich had produced 583 spin-offs total (530 active, 519 still Swiss-based); 2023 was a record year with 43 new spin-offs (up from 26 in 2022), 37 more followed in 2024. In 2023 ETH distributed CHF 47M in non-dilutive founder grants; in 2024 ETH spin-offs raised ~CHF 425M across 42 financing rounds (+25% YoY). Independent tracking by the University of St. Gallen found the 1998-2007 ETH spin-off cohort had a 93% five-year survival rate (vs. ~68% for comparable Swiss start-ups generally) and 81% ten-year survival, generating ~1,500 direct/indirect jobs (~7 jobs per spin-off, roughly double the Swiss start-up average).

Conclusions

Switzerland's exceptionally deep R&D funding base, patient capital markets and ETH's own global research ranking make this an outlier case; the model (equity-free grants plus in-house patenting capacity) is far harder to replicate where venture-capital or public R&D funding is thinner, and no independent negative case studies were found in available sources — itself a gap in the evidence base rather than a clean record.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Very high (> €5M) — CHF 47M in non-dilutive grants distributed in 2023 alone.
Time to results
Long (> 3 years)
Staffing & skills
ETH transfer patenting and licensing staff

Conditions for success

  • Deep national R&D funding base and patient capital markets
  • Equity-free non-dilutive founder grants (CHF 47M distributed in 2023)
  • Multi-decade consistent institutional tracking enabling long-run survival analysis

Common failure modes

  • Model relies on an unusually deep funding and research-ranking context, limiting direct replicability elsewhere

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

Attachments

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