Scale or Fail: Tech Tour Growth Health 2026 Keynote Jim Pulcrano on the Critical Role of Investors in Healthtech Growth
Europe’s healthtech sector is at a turning point. Scientific breakthroughs are accelerating, yet too few companies successfully scale beyond fragmented national markets, prolonged regulatory pathways, and increasingly cautious capital. Against this backdrop, Tech Tour Growth Health 2026 convenes this coming 30 June-1 July in Lausanne growth-stage companies and seasoned investors to tackle one of the ecosystem’s toughest questions: what actually turns innovation into global impact?
To explore these themes, we recently sat down with keynote speaker Jim Pulcrano, a seasoned executive and long-time faculty member at IMD with over 35 years of business experience and two decades working at the intersection of academia and real-world venture building. In this interview, Jim cuts through the optimism to examine the decisive — and sometimes destructive — role investors play in that journey. Drawing on his work with corporations, startups, and investors alike, he outlines why capital alone isn’t enough, where founders mis-judge the path to market, and what must change if Europe is to produce more globally competitive healthtech leaders.
TT: Your Keynote at Tech Tour Growth Health 2026 is titled “Scale or Fail: the Role of Investors.” In your experience and insight into hundreds of startups, how decisive is the role of investors in determining whether a company truly scales — rather than simply survives?
JP: Investors can be extremely important for a startup, both as enablers and derailers. I’ve seen many great investor/founder relationships; they both know it is a “deal”, but it’s clear to both that they need each other to be operating at the top of their respective games with a common intent. Unfortunately, I’ve seen just as many investors derail a promising startup, due to their own nervousness, lack of operating experience, short-term focus and inability to admit weakness or mistakes.
TT: Healthtech innovation sits at the intersection of science, regulation, and market demand. In your view, what are the biggest strategic mistakes founders make when trying to bring breakthrough health technologies to market?
JP: In general: underestimating the time, energy, money and patience it will take to get to market. In particular, for first-time founders straight out of their PhDs: not understanding deep down that, in addition to a therapy, you are creating a business.
TT: Europe has no shortage of breakthrough science, yet fewer companies scale into global leaders. What do you think Europe needs to do better to turn scientific excellence into globally competitive healthtech companies?
JP: We need to stop acting like 28 healthcare fiefdoms (EU + Switzerland). The rules and regulations that each country puts up (because “our situation is different…”) are simply ridiculous. I know the job of government is important, and I’m supportive of politicians and civil servants who play these roles, but they have little to no understanding of the challenges that founders face. The typical bureaucrat, at least in Switzerland, believes that all founders are destined to get rich off of taxpayer-funded research.
TT: At Tech Tour Growth Health, we’ll bring together growth-stage companies and leading investors from across Europe. What conversations do you hope founders and investors will be having together if we want to build the next generation of globally impactful healthtech companies?
JP: My talk, Scale or Fail: the Role of Investors, is meant to help founders and investors work together better, each playing to their strengths. I am a strong believer that society stands still without entrepreneurs, that inertia takes over, and we all lose. But entrepreneurs need capital and the resources that investors can bring to them. If one in ten creates a unicorn, and the founders and investors get wealthy from this, society as a whole is richer and healthier. These beliefs are also the foundation of the 4-day educational programme we created at IMD, Venture Capital Asset Management.
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As the industry gathers in Lausanne this summer, these are exactly the conversations that matter. Tech Tour Growth Health 2026 brings them to the forefront—connecting those building the future of health with those who have the power to scale it.
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