nexBio Amazonia: Entrepreneurs in the Amazon Rainforest

Mid-summer 2024, a group of fourteen different startups, mixing Brazilian and Swiss experts, toured the Para region in Northern Brazil. Across ten days spent meeting and connecting with the local community, the group gained valuable insights into the local biodiversity, bioeconomy, and people.

– By Kenza Lavallard Fadlane, MA student at the University of St. Gallen in International Affairs & Governance

This program emerging from a range of experts in academia, local bioeconomy, industry, government, and civil society was set up by the Brazilian branch of Swissnex. Focused on supporting actors looking to exchange across borders on innovative development, Swissnex provides the platform for involvement and encounters. This reflects the Confederation’s attempt at engaging with new ways of approaching business. Together with Professor Boanada and the Latin America Leading House in Saint Gallen, Swissnex designed an educational experience for Swiss entrepreneurs wanting to, or already doing business in the region. The purpose was to rethink business from the bottom-up to support the pillars of the Amazonian socio-bioeconomy.

During this tour between the river and the forest, participants engaged with the local community, exchanging on their business and sustainability perspectives through visits to cocoa plantations, as well as research and government institutions. This fostered discussions between the locals and the entrepreneurs about balancing economic development and socio-bioeconomy concerns. HSG master students also participated as academic and research support, showcasing the program’s interdisciplinarity and educational collaboration. Interested students can participate in next year’s edition, having all costs covered by Swissnex and its program partners during the entirety of the program.

“The main takeaway is that there is no planetary health and environmental sustainability excluding the human element.”

This is the primary insight HSG Professor Vanessa Boanada wants students to carry forward from the course Amazon NexBio – Entrepreneurship and Socio-Bio-Economy in the Amazon, taught during the 2024 fall break. 

From the Amazon to HSG Campus

When Professor Boanada first started teaching this course, she soon realized the contrast between its content about tropical climate and the cold reality of being in Switzerland. “You only understand the real challenges of development and doing business in the Amazon, once you’re there and you experience how great the distances are, how hard the lives of people can be” With funding, she transformed it into an immersive experience bringing the students outside the classroom and in the Amazon. Being on the field and meeting local entrepreneurs participated in the students’ greater understanding of the challenges of doing business in the Amazon. Unfortunately, after a few years of successful implementation, the effects of climate change prevented the course from continuing in such a format. The communities involved were now out of reach, landlocked during the dry season. This is where Swissnex Brazil stepped in. 

To build on the success of the nexBio Amazonia program, Professor Vanessa Boanada crafted the curriculum for the follow-up course. It offered a hands-on approach designed to provide 24 master’s students with a better understanding of the rich Amazonian culture, economy, and traditions from the perspective of local actors and decision-makers. The purpose was for students to learn about the Para region, nearly 30 times larger than Switzerland, and its challenges through interactive projects, bringing program’s products into the classroom.

Students worked together in teams on presentations covering the drivers of deforestation and degradation in the Amazon. They interacted with start-ups involved in the project to further discuss their experience and their business outlook. Finally, they concluded with creating a real-life business consultancy project aimed at supporting the start-ups in their business endeavors in the region. Beyond purely business-oriented outcomes, the purpose of this assignment was also to incorporate lessons from the class into a culturally aware approach to business. Professor Boanada denounces how local, indigenous entrepreneurs are often overlooked as real business partners. The startups selected to be in the project break away from this limitation by actively including indigenous knowledge in their operations.

Matthias König, founder of Foodflows participated in the first edition of nexBio. He appreciates the dynamism between Europe and Brazil supporting sustainable business efforts and relations. The project along with working with the students will help his startup’s core branding strategy. The purpose is to bring the products of nexBio to the European markets. Foodflows aims at creating customer awareness around products in the food supply chains by reducing the “anonymity and complexity of the food for people to really relate to the food they buy” He hopes that by working with indigenous entrepreneurs and crafting products accordingly, consumers will develop a greater consciousness of food production and the richness of goods they have available to them.