Keywords: Triple Helix model · financial innovation · MiCA · DLT Act · regulatory sandbox · fintech governance · university–industry–government · Switzerland · European Union · entrepreneurial state

1. Introduction

The transformation of financial services through distributed ledger technology (DLT), artificial intelligence, and decentralised finance has compelled jurisdictions worldwide to reconsider the relationship between innovation and regulation. The Triple Helix model, first theorised by Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff (1995), provides a framework for understanding how universities, industry, and government interact to generate knowledge-based economic development. In its original formulation, the model posited that innovation emerges from the dynamic interplay of these three institutional spheres, with each adopting characteristics of the others to produce hybrid organisations such as technology transfer offices, science parks, and venture capital firms (Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff, 2000). As Etzkowitz (2003, p. 295) observed, "the university is the generative principle of knowledge-based societies," while government and industry retain their primary roles as sources of contractual stability and production, respectively.

This article extends the Triple Helix framework to analyse how the EU and Switzerland have configured their innovation helices to address the challenges of financial services modernisation. The analysis reveals two distinct trajectories: the EU's trajectory toward a statist model of regulatory harmonisation, and Switzerland's evolution toward an entrepreneurial regulatory state that actively assumes industry-like functions in fostering innovation.

2. Theoretical Framework: The Triple Helix in Financial Innovation

2.1 The Model and Its Evolution

The Triple Helix model has evolved from a descriptive framework into a prescriptive tool for innovation policy. Etzkowitz (2008) identified three stages in its development: first, the internal transformation of each helix (e.g., universities becoming entrepreneurial); second, the influence of one helix upon another (e.g., government funding shaping university research); and third, the generation of new trilateral networks and hybrid organisations at the intersection of all three helices. In financial services, this third stage manifests in regulatory sandboxes, innovation hubs, and public–private partnerships that blur traditional boundaries between regulator and regulated (European Parliament, 2020).

The model's applicability to financial innovation is particularly salient because financial services occupy a unique position in the innovation ecosystem. Unlike traditional manufacturing, financial innovation is inherently regulatory—new products and services cannot be launched without navigating complex compliance frameworks. Consequently, the government helix assumes an outsized role, not merely as a regulator but as a co-producer of innovation infrastructure (Etzkowitz, 2008). This "regulatory innovation" function represents a significant departure from the laissez-faire model, wherein government maintains strict boundaries between its regulatory role and industry activity.

2.2 Financial Innovation as a Triple Helix Phenomenon

In the context of financial services, the Triple Helix manifests through several hybrid institutions. Regulatory sandboxes represent controlled environments where firms test innovative products under modified regulatory conditions, representing a fusion of government oversight and industry experimentation (European Parliament, 2020). Innovation hubs are dedicated contact points within regulatory authorities that provide guidance to fintech firms, effectively transforming regulators into knowledge-transfer intermediaries (European Parliament, 2020). University–industry consortia are academic research centres partnering with financial institutions and regulators to develop standards for emerging technologies such as blockchain and artificial intelligence (Etzkowitz, 2003).

These hybrid institutions are not merely administrative conveniences; they represent a fundamental restructuring of how financial innovation is produced. As Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff (2000) argued, the emergence of such intermediaries signals a shift from linear innovation models—in which universities produce basic research that industry commercialises—to recursive models in which knowledge flows circulate continuously among all three helices.

3. The European Union: A Statist Triple Helix for Financial Innovation

3.1 The Government Helix as Architect

The EU's approach to financial innovation is characterised by what the Triple Helix literature would identify as a statist model, wherein government assumes a dominant, directive role in shaping the innovation landscape. The Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), which entered into full force on 30 December 2024, represents the most comprehensive attempt to date to harmonise crypto-asset regulation across a major economic bloc (European Commission, 2024). MiCA establishes a unified licensing regime for crypto-asset service providers (CASPs), mandating authorisation requirements, capital adequacy standards, and disclosure obligations that apply uniformly across all twenty-seven member states (European Commission, 2024). This regulatory architecture reflects the EU's foundational commitment to the single market: innovation is permissible, but only within a harmonised framework that prevents regulatory arbitrage and protects retail investors.

The government helix's dominance in the EU model is further evidenced by the Digital Finance Strategy (2020), which explicitly positioned the European Commission as the primary architect of the bloc's fintech ecosystem. Rather than allowing market forces to determine the pace and direction of financial innovation, the Commission articulated a five-year roadmap encompassing MiCA, the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), and the proposed EU Data Act, each of which imposes significant compliance obligations on financial institutions (European Commission, 2020). This top-down orchestration is consistent with what Etzkowitz (2008) termed the "statist" configuration of the Triple Helix, wherein government "takes the leading role in the innovation process and directs the relationships among the other helices" (p. 9).

The European Banking Authority (EBA) and the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) function as the institutional embodiment of this statist orientation. Both authorities have developed extensive technical standards under MiCA, producing regulatory technical standards (RTS) and implementing technical standards (ITS) that specify, in granular detail, the operational requirements for CASPs, issuers of asset-referenced tokens, and issuers of e-money tokens (ESMA, 2024). This standard-setting function, while essential for market integrity, simultaneously constrains the space available for regulatory experimentation—a tension that the Triple Helix literature identifies as characteristic of statist innovation systems (Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff, 2000).

3.2 The University Helix in the EU Context

The university helix in the EU's financial innovation ecosystem occupies a secondary, largely advisory role. European universities have produced significant research on distributed ledger technology, algorithmic trading, and decentralised finance, yet the translation of this research into regulatory policy has been mediated primarily through formal consultation processes rather than through the kind of deep institutional hybridisation that the Triple Helix model associates with knowledge-intensive innovation (Etzkowitz, 2003). The European Central Bank's research network and the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission represent partial exceptions, functioning as quasi-academic bodies that bridge the university and government helices. However, their outputs—working papers, technical reports, and policy briefs—tend to inform rather than co-produce regulatory frameworks.

The EU's Horizon Europe programme has funded several research consortia examining the governance of digital finance, including projects on central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and the systemic risks of decentralised finance (European Commission, 2021). These consortia bring together universities, industry participants, and regulatory bodies in configurations that approximate the Triple Helix ideal of trilateral knowledge production. Nevertheless, the structural asymmetry between the government helix and the other two helices means that research outputs are filtered through a regulatory lens that prioritises risk mitigation over innovation facilitation. As Leydesdorff and Etzkowitz (1998, p. 203) cautioned, when one helix dominates, "the other two are reduced to performing functions that serve the dominant helix's objectives rather than generating independent innovation dynamics."

3.3 The Industry Helix and Regulatory Compliance as Innovation

The EU's industry helix has responded to the statist regulatory environment in ways that are themselves instructive for Triple Helix analysis. Rather than resisting the compliance burden imposed by MiCA and DORA, leading European financial institutions have begun to treat regulatory compliance as a form of competitive differentiation—a phenomenon that Etzkowitz (2008) would recognise as the industry helix internalising government functions. Major banks and fintech firms have established dedicated regulatory technology (RegTech) divisions, investing in automated compliance systems that simultaneously satisfy regulatory requirements and generate proprietary data assets (European Parliament, 2020).

This dynamic is particularly evident in the development of the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI), a joint initiative of the European Commission and the European Blockchain Partnership. EBSI represents a hybrid institution in the Triple Helix sense: it is government-initiated, industry-implemented, and university-researched, yet its governance structure reflects the EU's characteristic tendency to vest ultimate authority in public institutions (European Commission, 2021). The result is an innovation infrastructure that is technically sophisticated but institutionally conservative—capable of supporting incremental innovation within established parameters, but less well-suited to the kind of disruptive experimentation that characterises Switzerland's approach.

4. Switzerland: An Entrepreneurial Triple Helix for Financial Innovation

4.1 The Government Helix as Enabler

Switzerland's approach to financial innovation represents a markedly different configuration of the Triple Helix, one that more closely approximates what Etzkowitz (2008) termed the "entrepreneurial state" model. In this configuration, government does not merely regulate innovation but actively assumes entrepreneurial functions, creating institutional conditions that enable industry and universities to experiment at the frontier of financial technology. The Federal Act on the Adaptation of Federal Law to Developments in Distributed Ledger Technology (the DLT Act), which entered into force in stages between 2021 and 2022, exemplifies this orientation (Swiss Federal Council, 2021).

Unlike MiCA's prescriptive, rules-based architecture, the DLT Act operates on a principle-based model that establishes legal certainty for DLT-based transactions without specifying the precise technical means by which that certainty must be achieved. The Act introduced the concept of "DLT securities" (Registerwertrechte) into Swiss law, enabling the tokenisation of financial instruments on distributed ledgers without requiring the physical delivery of certificates (Swiss Federal Council, 2021). This legislative innovation—creating a new legal category rather than adapting existing categories—reflects the Swiss government helix's willingness to restructure foundational legal frameworks in response to technological change, a characteristic that Etzkowitz (2003) associates with entrepreneurial regulatory states.

The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) has reinforced this entrepreneurial orientation through its principle-based supervisory approach. FINMA's 2018 ICO Guidelines and subsequent guidance on DLT-based financial services established a technology-neutral framework that classifies crypto-assets according to their economic function rather than their technical form (FINMA, 2018). This functional approach allows the regulatory framework to accommodate technological evolution without requiring legislative amendment—a form of regulatory adaptability that the Triple Helix literature associates with high-performing innovation ecosystems (Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff, 2000).

4.2 The University Helix: ETH Zurich and the Entrepreneurial University

Switzerland's university helix is anchored by the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETH Zurich) and the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), both of which have developed deep institutional relationships with the Swiss financial services industry. ETH Zurich's Centre for Financial Technology and the EPFL's Swiss Finance Institute represent precisely the kind of hybrid organisations that Etzkowitz (2003) identified as characteristic of the entrepreneurial university: they combine academic research with industry partnership, technology transfer, and policy engagement in ways that blur the boundaries between the university and industry helices.

The Swiss Finance Institute, jointly funded by Swiss banks, the Swiss National Science Foundation, and the federal government, exemplifies the trilateral knowledge production that the Triple Helix model identifies as the hallmark of mature innovation ecosystems (Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff, 2000). Its research agenda spans quantitative finance, financial regulation, and fintech, with outputs that flow simultaneously into academic journals, regulatory consultations, and industry practice. This recursive knowledge circulation—in which research informs regulation, regulation shapes industry practice, and industry practice generates new research questions—represents the Triple Helix in its most developed form.

The Crypto Valley ecosystem centred on Zug provides a further illustration of university–industry–government hybridisation in the Swiss context. The Crypto Valley Association, established in 2017, functions as a quasi-governmental body that coordinates between blockchain firms, cantonal authorities, and academic institutions, facilitating the kind of trilateral dialogue that the Triple Helix model associates with sustained innovation capacity (Crypto Valley Association, 2023). The University of Zurich's Blockchain Center and the University of Basel's Centre for Innovative Finance contribute academic legitimacy to this ecosystem, while simultaneously drawing on it as a living laboratory for empirical research.

4.3 The Industry Helix: Regulatory Arbitrage as Innovation Driver

Switzerland's industry helix has historically benefited from the country's tradition of financial sovereignty and its willingness to position regulatory distinctiveness as a competitive advantage. The Swiss banking sector's long-standing expertise in private wealth management, combined with its early adoption of blockchain technology, created the conditions for a fintech ecosystem that is disproportionately large relative to Switzerland's population and GDP (Swiss State Secretariat for International Finance, 2022).

The emergence of SEBA Bank and Sygnum Bank—the world's first regulated crypto banks—illustrates the industry helix's capacity to generate genuinely novel institutional forms within Switzerland's enabling regulatory environment. Both institutions obtained banking licences from FINMA in 2019, combining traditional banking services with crypto-asset custody, trading, and tokenisation in a single regulated entity (FINMA, 2019). This institutional innovation would have been considerably more difficult to achieve within the EU's regulatory architecture, where the separation between banking and crypto-asset service provision is more rigidly maintained under MiCA.

The Swiss industry helix's relationship with the government helix is characterised by a degree of co-production that is unusual in comparative perspective. Industry associations such as the Swiss Bankers Association and the Swiss Fintech Association participate actively in the legislative process, contributing technical expertise that shapes regulatory outcomes in ways that the Triple Helix literature would identify as industry helix penetration of the government helix (Etzkowitz, 2008). This co-production is not without its critics—concerns about regulatory capture are perennial in Swiss financial governance—but it has demonstrably accelerated the pace of regulatory adaptation to technological change.

5. Comparative Analysis: Two Models of Financial Innovation Governance

5.1 Helix Configurations and Innovation Outcomes

The foregoing analysis reveals two distinct Triple Helix configurations in European financial innovation governance. Table 1 below summarises the key dimensions of divergence across the two jurisdictions.

Table 1: Triple Helix Configurations in EU and Swiss Financial Innovation

These configurations produce different innovation outcomes. The EU's statist model generates regulatory certainty at scale—MiCA's passport mechanism allows a CASP licensed in one member state to operate across all twenty-seven, reducing the compliance burden for firms seeking pan-European market access (European Commission, 2024). However, this certainty comes at the cost of flexibility: the detailed technical standards produced by EBA and ESMA create compliance obligations that may be disproportionately burdensome for early-stage fintech firms, potentially concentrating market power among incumbents with the resources to navigate complex regulatory requirements.

Switzerland's entrepreneurial model, by contrast, generates flexibility at the cost of scale. FINMA's principle-based approach allows firms to innovate rapidly within a single jurisdiction, but Switzerland's non-membership of the EU single market means that Swiss-licensed firms must obtain separate authorisation to access European markets—a significant competitive disadvantage for firms seeking pan-European growth (Swiss State Secretariat for International Finance, 2022). The DLT Act's legal innovations, while technically sophisticated, do not automatically translate into market access rights within the EU, creating a structural tension between Switzerland's innovation ambitions and its geopolitical position.

5.2 Regulatory Sandboxes as Triple Helix Laboratories

Regulatory sandboxes represent perhaps the most explicit institutional manifestation of Triple Helix dynamics in financial innovation governance. Both the EU and Switzerland have developed sandbox mechanisms, but their design reflects the divergent helix configurations identified above.

The EU's DLT Pilot Regime, established by Regulation (EU) 2022/858, creates a controlled environment for trading and settlement of DLT-based financial instruments, allowing market infrastructures to operate under modified regulatory conditions for a period of up to six years (European Parliament, 2022). The Pilot Regime is explicitly framed as a learning mechanism—a means of generating regulatory knowledge that will inform the eventual permanent framework for DLT-based market infrastructure. This framing is consistent with the Triple Helix model's emphasis on recursive knowledge production: the sandbox generates empirical data that flows back into the regulatory process, enabling iterative refinement of the government helix's outputs.

FINMA's sandbox, by contrast, operates on a more permissive basis. Firms accepting deposits of up to CHF 100 million from the public may operate without a banking licence, provided they do not invest or pay interest on the deposits received (FINMA, 2018). This threshold-based approach reflects Switzerland's characteristic preference for bright-line rules that provide immediate legal certainty, rather than the process-based approach of the EU Pilot Regime. The Swiss sandbox has incubated several significant fintech innovations, including payment infrastructure providers and digital asset custodians, demonstrating the industry helix's capacity to generate novel institutional forms within an enabling regulatory environment.

5.3 The Role of Institutional Trust

A dimension of the comparative analysis that the Triple Helix model does not fully capture is the role of institutional trust in shaping innovation ecosystems. Switzerland's financial innovation ecosystem is underpinned by a deep reservoir of institutional trust—in the stability of the Swiss franc, the reliability of Swiss legal institutions, and the predictability of FINMA's supervisory approach—that has been accumulated over decades of financial sector development (Swiss State Secretariat for International Finance, 2022). This trust functions as a form of social capital that lubricates the interactions among the three helices, reducing transaction costs and enabling the kind of rapid institutional adaptation that characterises Switzerland's response to DLT.

The EU's institutional trust environment is more complex. The single market's scale and diversity mean that trust must be constructed through formal regulatory mechanisms—harmonised standards, mutual recognition agreements, and supranational enforcement—rather than through the informal networks and shared norms that characterise smaller, more cohesive innovation ecosystems. MiCA's detailed disclosure and authorisation requirements can be understood, in this light, not merely as regulatory impositions but as trust-production mechanisms: they create the conditions under which market participants across twenty-seven jurisdictions can transact with confidence in the integrity of the regulatory framework (European Commission, 2024).

6. Discussion: Toward a Hybrid Model?

6.1 Convergence and Divergence

The comparative analysis suggests that the EU and Swiss models of financial innovation governance are neither wholly convergent nor wholly divergent. Both jurisdictions have adopted regulatory sandbox mechanisms, both have invested in innovation hubs within their supervisory authorities, and both have recognised the need to adapt foundational legal frameworks to accommodate DLT-based financial instruments. These convergences reflect the common technological pressures that both jurisdictions face, as well as the influence of international standard-setting bodies such as the Financial Stability Board and the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, which function as a fourth helix of sorts—an international governance layer that shapes national and supranational regulatory choices (Etzkowitz, 2008).

At the same time, the structural differences between the two models are likely to persist. The EU's commitment to regulatory harmonisation across twenty-seven member states creates path dependencies that constrain the pace of regulatory adaptation, while Switzerland's bilateral relationship with the EU creates incentives to maintain regulatory distinctiveness as a competitive advantage. These structural factors suggest that the two models will continue to evolve along divergent trajectories, even as they borrow selectively from each other's institutional innovations.

The central challenge for both jurisdictions is to configure their respective helices in ways that harness the generative potential of trilateral interaction while managing the systemic risks that financial innovation inevitably entails. Neither the statist nor the entrepreneurial model offers a complete solution; the optimal configuration is likely to be context-dependent, varying with the scale, institutional heritage, and geopolitical position of each jurisdiction.

6.2 Implications for Triple Helix Theory

The analysis of EU and Swiss financial innovation governance offers several insights for Triple Helix theory. First, it demonstrates that the model's three helices can be configured in multiple ways to produce innovation, and that no single configuration is universally superior. The EU's statist model and Switzerland's entrepreneurial model each generate distinctive innovation outcomes that reflect the structural characteristics of their respective political economies. This finding is consistent with the comparative institutionalist literature, which emphasises the path-dependent nature of national innovation systems (Hall and Soskice, 2001).

Second, the analysis highlights the importance of the regulatory helix as a distinct dimension of financial innovation governance. In financial services, the government helix does not merely provide the institutional framework within which innovation occurs; it actively co-produces innovation through its standard-setting, sandbox, and innovation hub functions. This co-productive role blurs the boundary between the government and industry helices in ways that the original Triple Helix model did not fully anticipate, suggesting the need for a more nuanced conceptualisation of the government helix in regulatory-intensive industries.

Third, the analysis points to the significance of scale as a variable in Triple Helix dynamics. Switzerland's small size and institutional coherence enable a degree of helix interpenetration—of informal knowledge exchange and co-production among universities, industry, and government—that is difficult to replicate at the EU's scale. The EU's response to this challenge—the creation of formal hybrid institutions such as EBSI and the EBA Innovation Hub—represents an attempt to engineer at scale the kind of organic trilateral collaboration that emerges naturally in smaller, more cohesive innovation ecosystems.

7. Conclusion

This article has applied the Triple Helix model to compare the financial innovation ecosystems of the European Union and Switzerland, revealing two distinct configurations of the university–industry–government triad. The EU's statist model, exemplified by MiCA and the Digital Finance Strategy, positions the government helix as the primary architect of financial innovation, producing regulatory certainty at the cost of flexibility. Switzerland's entrepreneurial model, exemplified by the DLT Act and FINMA's principle-based supervisory approach, positions the government helix as an enabler of industry-led innovation, producing flexibility at the cost of scale.

Both models have generated significant institutional innovations—regulatory sandboxes, innovation hubs, and hybrid research consortia—that reflect the Triple Helix's core insight that innovation emerges from the dynamic interaction of institutional spheres rather than from any single helix acting alone. The emergence of these hybrid institutions in both jurisdictions suggests a degree of convergence toward what Etzkowitz (2008) termed the "innovation society," in which the boundaries among universities, industry, and government are continuously renegotiated in response to technological change.

The comparative analysis also reveals the limits of the Triple Helix model as applied to financial innovation governance. The model's emphasis on knowledge production and technology transfer, developed primarily in the context of science-based industries, does not fully capture the distinctive dynamics of regulatory-intensive sectors such as financial services, where the government helix's co-productive role is qualitatively different from its role in other innovation domains. Future research might usefully extend the Triple Helix framework to incorporate the international governance layer represented by bodies such as the Financial Stability Board, the Basel Committee, and the International Organization of Securities Commissions, which function as a supranational fourth helix shaping the innovation choices of national and regional regulatory authorities.

As both the EU and Switzerland continue to adapt their regulatory frameworks to the challenges of artificial intelligence, tokenisation, and decentralised finance, the Triple Helix model offers a valuable lens through which to understand the institutional dynamics of financial innovation governance. The central insight of the model—that innovation is a social process, produced through the interaction of multiple institutional spheres rather than through the isolated efforts of any single actor—is as relevant to the regulation of crypto-assets as it is to the development of biotechnology or aerospace. The challenge for policymakers in both jurisdictions is to configure their respective helices in ways that harness the generative potential of this interaction while managing the systemic risks that financial innovation inevitably entails.