Out: UK and London, Reasons: extremely high costs for everything, huge traffic in London area, mostly just English language skills

In: Switzerland, Reasons: lower cost also due to the lower Swiss Franc against EUR, multi-lingual, highly qualified labour force, very low corporate taxes (can even be negotiated)

Yahoo follows a range of other tech companies such as Google, EA, Cisco but also IBM, HP and Microsoft.

The Swiss EAWAG (a water research organisation) has opened its new headquarters building in Dübendorf (near Zurich). The big news is that the 120-employee office building includes every possible technological means to reduce energy and water consumption. According to local newspapers the heating costs alone will be reduced by some 300k CHF per year. The building has - with the exception of the lower floor restaurant - no heating or aircon system built in.

All this is possible with the help of a range of technologies and a specialized architectural design such as for example:

• heat dissipation from the server room and employees' body heat is circulated, stored in walls and exchanged keeping a constant inside room temperature
• solar cells produce 50% of the electricity requirements
• panels in front of all the windows (see picture above) are automatically adjusted to let the required amount of sun light and heat in.

Switzerland is well known for its high-quality products and beautiful countryside, attracting people from all over the world (you find Japanase, Americans and now also many Chinese in the popular tourist destinations all year around). Now Switzerland seems to have become a place for entrepreneurs, just like the US - or at least that's what a PR-savvy management consultancy and a local university say. What's happening?

Every year McKinsey and the ETH Zürich (technical university of Zurich) run a business plan contest. While it is a great PR act for McKinsey, the ETH can also profit from it since they can show that they help to create high-tech jobs. (according to their own statistics 1'700 high paying jobs have been created since the contest's inception)

Now this year they're even going one step further and starting to compare Switzerland with the US. That's at least what Thomas Knecht from McKinsey Switzerland told the local press.

Guys, I encourage you to continue this activity. But please don't try to fly without wings. Any job claims you make we really have to question. Also there is clearly no comparsion between venture funding and startup activity in Switzerland and the US. Any other claim only serves the self-interest of the sponsors and the ETH who - as one should know - get more public money for the professors if they show that they create spin-offs. Also a good idea, but the number of really viable startups that originated from this can be counted on one hand. University spin-offs rarely qualify as hugely successful startups. Lastly, how far will 135k CHF bring any serious startup company - that's the amount McKinsey and others pay to the winner. That's why we've listed this post under Sales & Marketing Strategy - because that's what it is for the sponsors.