Boston | March 13, 2026 

By Philippe Roesle, CEO of Swissnex in Boston and New York

Seven months ago, when I arrived in Boston as CEO of Swissnex in Boston and New York, I expected conversations about innovation to revolve primarily around biotech, life sciences, and healthcare. These are, after all, the sectors for which the Boston innovation ecosystem is world-famous. Yet it did not take long before I encountered a term that captures something deeper about how innovation works here: Tough Tech—a concept popularized locally by The Engine, an MIT-founded incubator and ecosystem supporting science-driven startups. The term describes technologies rooted in deep science and engineering that tackle hard problems in the physical world—often requiring significant upfront capital, longer development timelines, and a higher tolerance for risk.

The more time I spent in the ecosystem, the more frequently the term surfaced—and the more it resonated with my own observations. Tough tech has become, for me, a useful shorthand for where innovation excels in Boston and across much of the U.S. East Coast: at the intersection of rigorous science, engineering ambition, and a willingness to confront complexity head-on.

Boston is sometimes described as a place of “quiet innovation,” and that phrase captures something essential. The innovation ecosystem of Boston is built on depth rather than spectacle. Anchored by a dense network of research institutions and laboratories, the region has developed a distinctive capability: translating frontier academic science into technologies that operate in the physical world. In the Kendall Square orbit, software engineers collaborate with biologists, roboticists, and materials scientists; startups emerge not only around code, but around molecules, machines, and manufacturing systems. Founders here are less often university dropouts than leaders of university spin-offs with PhDs and postdoctoral experience, evidence of their long-term engagement with complex technical and intellectual challenges. Where else could highly innovative companies as diverse as Boston Dynamics (robotics), Formlabs (advanced manufacturing), Commonwealth Fusion Systems (fusion energy) and Moderna (biotech) emerge from the same ecosystem?

The next wave of innovation here is less about apps than about the convergence of artificial intelligence, life sciences, advanced manufacturing, and— increasingly—climate technology. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is offering considerable investment and support to spin-offs and scale-ups developing next-generation batteries, carbon-capture technologies, waste-to-value technologies, and new forms of energy infrastructure for a decarbonized economy.

What personally motivates me about Boston is that it is not only a place for tough tech, but also for tough questions. The city is filled with people willing to engage intellectually with the societal implications of technological progress: how to govern artificial intelligence, how to decarbonize industrial systems, or how societies should respond to planetary limits. I encounter this intellectual richness in my daily work—and also in the most unexpected places. On the playground, during chance conversations with other parents (who more often than not turn out to have impressive academic résumés) while watching our children play. This openness to difficult conversations creates a remarkable intellectual energy.

It is also why initiatives such as Swissnex’s Planetary Embassy have resonated here more strongly than I could have anticipated. By bringing together scientists, entrepreneurs, activists, artists, filmmakers, and NGOs to explore a planetary diplomacy for an age of planetary crises, the project is tapping into something deeply characteristic of Boston’s ecosystem: the conviction that innovation is not only about building technologies, but also about collectively thinking through the futures we want to create.

For Switzerland—whose strengths lie in precision engineering, pharmaceuticals, and applied research—Boston offers a living laboratory for translating scientific excellence into industrial transformation. At the same time, Switzerland’s role as a global hub for international diplomacy and trust in science resonates strongly with Boston’s culture of rigorous inquiry and open debate. What lies around the bend here is not another social media platform, but new infrastructures for health, automation, computing, and climate resilience. For those seeking to understand where the knowledge economy is heading, spending time in Boston means witnessing how our physical and intellectual future is being engineered.