Entrepreneurship is also industrial
June started with a new edition of Biz Barcelona, the reference event for SMEs and entrepreneurs. For the second consecutive year IQS Tech Factory organized a roundtable that dealt with entrepreneurship from a different point of view, giving voice to some of the most important sectors of the industry today.
How is industrial entrepreneurship evolving and how can this evolution affect industrial development? This is only one of the big questions that were formulated on Wednesday during the round table on ‘Industrial Entrepreneurship”, as part of the first day of Biz Barcelona.
At one o’clock, Oriol Pascual, director of the entrepreneurship center IQS Tech Factory, kicked off the roundtable accompanied by Raül Blanco, Manager of Industrial Strategy at the Ministry of Industry of the Catalan Government; Marc Ramis, General Manager at Technology & Business Innovation; Abel Conill, Investment Manager at Victoria Capital; Isabel Amat, Head of Biotech and Business Development in Reig Jofre; and Xavi Servat, Manager at Fluidra Accelera. Five experts representing the administration, technology transfer, investment and corporations.
Building upon the experience and viewpoint of each participant, Pascual started the roundtable by entering one of the most recurrent concepts of current entrepreneurial ecosystem, the new industry. When asked about the meaning and its impact on the industrial strategy, Raul Blanco noted that nowadays industry is not only about manufacturing, but also is about industrial services. All in all, the new accounts for 50% of Catalan GDP. In relation to the current industrial trends, Blanco added: “Industry 4.0, the digitalization of industry, goes beyond the concept of factory; it is about, amongst others, enabling higher levels of specialization which lead to a range of opportunities for new businesses”.
In this regard, Marc Ramis, emphasized, according to his experience in the field of tech transfer, that: “Although industry is changing, Spanish TTOs (Tech Transfer Offices) have lots of technological quality but low quantities of it, as well as micromanagement practices hinder the transfer process of technology to the market.” For this reason, Ramis urged to continue working to bring the quality of research teams to industry and train researchers in entrepreneurial skills.
Following the interventions of two experts in the industry sector, Oriol Pascual wanted to give way for Abel Conill, Investment Manager at Victoria Capital, to know the reasons that lead his fund to bet and invest in university spin-offs. Conill explained that one of the reasons that brought them to decide to bet on this sector in 2015, was the realisation that a large number of leading research groups do not have entrepreneurial spirit. That’s when Conill and his partner, Patricia Layola, saw a gap in the market and decided to create a venture capital fund. “As investors, we are a temporary partner, we look for disruptive technologies and work in its acceleration to market.”
According to this statement, Isabel Amat, director of Biotech and Business Development at Reig Jofre, said that due to the fast advances in science and technology, the pharmaceutical market is increasingly looking for more innovative solutions and knowledge outside the company boundaries. “We want to work with open innovation and entrepreneursial approaches”. Amat also pointed out that to keep growing within the complex structures of large organizations, the startup values are increasingly necessary and important.
Following some aspects noted during Amat intervention, the director of IQS Tech Factory continued with Xavi Servat, Manager of Fluidra Accelera. When asked about the reasons that brought the multinational Fluidra to bet on Accelera, Servat explained that the competitiveness of the industrial sector showed them that corporations needed more speed. “We want to turn external innovation into benefits for our customers, so we can create added value for our products.” Servat also wanted to emphasize one of the most common problems of entrepreneurial projects, lack of funding and lack of knowledge of business management. In this regard all agreed that it’s necessary to create teams that have different profiles, both academic and professional, to join engineering and management.
Finally, to close the roundtable, Oriol Pascual focused the last round of interventions on one of the topics that causes currently diversity of opinions; patents. Focusing on the evolution of industrial entrepreneurship, Raül Blanco, Manager of Industrial Strategy at the Ministry of Industry, argued that “the complexity of open innovation ecosystem contrasts with the traditional culture of patents”. This was confirmed by Abel Conill, who stated that innovative technologies are nowadays more important than patents. “Maybe we should patent less and work more on the strategy and culture of intellectual property,” concluded Marc Ramis.
Click here to read the Spanish version: El emprendimiento también es industrial