The five videos highlight key learnings from the 2022 Peer to Peer Conference.
In the keynote, Steffen Schewerda of Aebi Schmidt addresses how a Swiss company needs to adapt to the US market to be successful in the country and how Buy America can work to a company’s advantage. The main quote: ‚In the US, it’s not about getting the cookie, but about getting your hand in the cookie jar.‘
In the success story, Roman Bolli gives an overview of South Pole‘s exponential growth over the past years in the US. Benefiting from companies’ growing concern around and increasingly strict adherence to climate goals, the company has gone from 30 to over 90 employees in the past year and has acquired numerous notable US clients.
The panel on workforce development and acquisition looks into four specific ways of addressing the challenge around hiring & acquiring workforce in the US. Roman Bolli of South Pole speaks about the importance of building a company culture. Tracy Dove of the Swiss Embassy mentions that implementing an apprenticeship program can solve issues around building a workforce and company culture, while Christine Castaneda points at advantages of working with an HR company such as Adecco. Jim Alexander of Maggio Kattar provides an overview over visa issues that come with bringing employees from Switzerland to the US.
The panel on startups highlights Swiss entrepreneurs‘ unique journeys in the US, including Alex Pachikov‘s of Sunflower Labs and Eugenio Valli’s of Swissloop Tunneling. Andreas Jossen of SBB‘s Technology & Innovation Outpost in San Francisco and James Rees of Noverram speak about their experience advising Swiss startups on their US market entry and growth strategies.
The infrastructure panel highlights opportunities for Swiss companies in US infrastructure in four specific industry areas in which Swiss companies‘ competencies match US infrastructure needs. Craig Hill of Leica Geosystems speaks of his company‘s success in US hard infrastructure, e.g. bridges and tunnels. Walter Steinkogler of Wyssen Avalanche tells the unique success story of how his company was proactively approached by a US DoT to expand to the country. Gabriel von Rickenbach of Geobrugg represents a successful Swiss company in resilient infrastructure in the US and Monica Morgan of Hasler Rail stands for a growing Swiss company in US rail. John Everhart of Sulzer goes into the depths of what domestic content provisions mean for a Swiss company in the US municipal water sector.
