Book documenting Swiss success launches in Amman

AMMAN — The birthplace of Nestle, UBS, the Solar Impulse airplane and the World Wide Web, Switzerland is the topic of recently translated bestseller, “Swiss Made: The Untold Story Behind Switzerland’s Success”.

John McCarthy, whose company launched an Arabic translation of the book, said his goal was to share the Swiss success story with the Arab world.

McCarthy, an American, has been living in Switzerland for the past 30 years, and during that time, he said he realised that “the Swiss have put together a very good recipe for success which MENA countries could try to emulate”.

He attributed his choice to translate the book into Arabic to his experience in the Middle East.

McCarthy said while he was still a college student at Princeton, he was advised by a professor to take a 10-month intensive Arabic course in Lebanon. After completing the course and then his degree, McCarthy went back to Lebanon where he met his first wife and eventually had two children.

Years later, after McCarthy had occupied different jobs and lived in various places, he encountered the author of the book, R. James Breiding.

McCarthy told The Jordan Times that by that time the book had been translated into Japanese, Mandarin and other languages; however, not Arabic.

“I told him [Breiding], what about Arabic? That is 400 to 420 million people that this message is not getting to,” McCarthy said.

The book discusses the success of Swiss businesses dating back 300 years, and it notes that most of those businesses’ founders were immigrants.

Launched at Readers on Monday with representatives from the Swiss embassy in Amman, the book is now available in Arabic for the first time in Jordan.

The Swiss government exerts little to no influence over the market, which, along with many other factors gives Switzerland its “Silicon Valley” reputation and global leadership position in competitiveness and innovation, according to McCarthy’s summary of the book.

“Wherever Breiding and I go, our point is not to critique countries but to help them learn from a success model,” McCarthy said.