Korean collaboration and Finnish courage kick off FemCAT's new season

"The country has been diagnosed enough; now things need to be made to happen," says Tatxo Benet, president of the Fundació FemCAT. Catalonia is an innovative region, with companies trying to grow and considerable potential. The problem, however, seems clear to FemCAT: what's missing is more unity and more will to make things happen. At a press event to present the organisation's 14th Forum, the president recalled that the business world must move to action, and that Catalonia needs more resolve to advance.

Benet cited Finland and South Korea as examples, for their courage and their public-private collaboration, respectively. He noted that both countries have built a strong, united business base and have enabled private innovation and public research to work together to move forward. He also confirmed that former Finnish prime minister Sanna Marin and the director-general of the Korea Economic Research Institute (KERI), Taekyu Lee, are among the big names confirmed for this year's gathering, titled Compromís, complicitat, coratge, Catalunya [Commitment, complicity, courage, Catalonia].

This year's event turns on the motto's four watchwords. Complicity, as a starting point for building trust and aligning the different players; commitment, so that everyone takes responsibility and moves to action; and courage, needed to make decisions, set priorities and hold a single course. Catalonia, finally, as the field of action, the subject and the shared ambition. "These are the capacities a country needs to face complex transformations," Benet said, adding that they are meant as long-term concepts, since short-term thinking is no longer an option: "The long term starts today."

The event will take place on 10 November at the Petit Palau de la Música Catalana and aims to bring together much of Catalonia's business ecosystem, along with prominent figures from the country's politics and economy. Among the key attendees are Josep Rull, president of the Parlament de Catalunya, at the opening, and Salvador Illa, president of the Generalitat, at the closing. Meanwhile, the forum's three conference sessions, each named after one of the motto's three concepts, feature Catalan business figures such as Jaume Sanpera, CEO of Sateliot, and Mariona Sanz, director of innovation and business development at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center.

Bigger companies, higher wages

The Fundació FemCAT president also wanted to describe his vision of Catalonia's ideal business landscape. He referred to the Informe Fénix, whose conclusions on the Catalan economy held that growth in the country's gross domestic product (GDP) is not the only thing that matters; the distribution of that wealth matters too. "We need bigger companies in Catalonia to have higher wages," Benet said. Larger companies, he noted, need more skilled workers, and, he argued, "the more skilled they are, the more they should be paid."

For Benet, this goal calls for stronger ties between companies, and with public administration too. He confirmed that the country has "great research centres," but that this knowledge needs to reach the business world. He stopped short of calling it Catalonia's unfinished business, joking that "there are more important things, like fixing the trains," but he made clear that this should be part of Catalonia's business roadmap. He also called for companies to have more capital available to invest in innovation.

A philosophical look at AI

Benet was not about to leave out the latest news on artificial intelligence. He mentioned comments by British engineer Jacob Coxon, who recently said AI could end up killing humans by the end of the decade. The 27-year-old researcher made those remarks shortly after announcing his resignation from Anthropic. Rather than trying to stoke panic, Coxon opened up a space for reflection on the technology's exponential growth. Benet confirmed that this issue will also be addressed at this year's FemCAT forum, but made clear it will be approached from a "more philosophical, more human" angle.