The Barcelona City Council has created the Deep Tech Fund, initially endowed with 10 million euros, to promote innovative projects and companies with a vision of social, scientific, and technological impact. The fund is complemented by Barcelona Accelera, dedicated to the acceleration of emerging companies, promoted by the public agency Barcelona Activa, and also by the Barcelona Deep Tech Node, a space for mentoring and support to ensure that spin-off and start-up projects can access the market.
Among other objectives, the fund, which will be activated after the summer of 2022, will facilitate knowledge intermediation between research and business and promote entrepreneurial projects in the scientific field. The Barcelona City Council trusts that this relationship between the city's public and private actors will revert to the fund itself, so that private investment from companies and other administrations will multiply the initial resources by three, at least up to 20 million euros, through international deep tech funds that will be dedicated to investing in Barcelona's innovative market.
The municipal initiative is part of the actions that will be carried out by the new council of the Barcelona Innovation Coast (BIC), a public-private platform that brings together all the innovative agents of the city (universities and business schools; research and knowledge transfer centers; business associations; clusters; financing agents and public administrations). The BIC council will be responsible for providing a strategic vision that allows boosting R&D&i in economy of scale and for the entire Barcelona Metropolitan area, which hosts five million inhabitants. Its tasks include specifying the potential sectors for promoting knowledge transfer and innovation generation and defining the different instruments necessary to enhance it.
The BIC's action will have an economic impact of 235 million euros and will create 40,000 jobs in 10 yearsAccording to the Barcelona City Council,the BIC will have a significant economic impact on the city, estimated at 235 million euros for the next 10 years, with the creation of 40,000 direct jobs, of which 750 jobs are closely linked to innovation and project development. Its focus will be on the strategic sectors of health, mobility, and energy, and as a transversal vector, technology and digitalization. It seeks to consolidate Barcelona as ahubof innovation of the 2030 Agenda.
The Deputy Mayor for the 2030 Agenda, Digital Transition, Sports and Territorial and Metropolitan Coordination, Laia Bonet, stated that the constitution of the BIC demonstrates how the Barcelona city council wants to work through shared governance and by constituting a meeting space to generate strategies.
For his part, the First Deputy Mayor, Jaume Collboni, stressed that with the constitution of the Barcelona Innovation Coast council, a further step is taken in promoting the strategy that, from the City Council, they are deploying to shape the Barcelona of the future: "a strategy based on economic diversification, on innovation and knowledge for a more sustainable, resilient and equitable economy."
Add The New Barcelona Post as your preferred Google source for free
Stay informed with the latest news.
