Emergent models of financial intermediation for innovative companies: from venture capital to crowdinvesting platforms in Switzerland

The recent financial crisis has accelerated the changes with regard to the spatial organization of financial channels. In direct investments, the venture capital industry in Switzerland used to be connected to national and international financial markets. Today, these traditional direct investment players are in decline because their traditional business model is no longer suited to the current economic environment. Instead, a new business model for direct investment has recently emerged at the same time revitalizing this financial sector: crowdinvesting platforms exploit more intensively the possibilities opened by Information and Communication technologies and of specialized, but dispersed, expertise. This article highlights the strengths and weaknesses of both business models as well as their contrasted time and space ways to deal with uncertainty.