The city of wonders… entrepreneurs

Throughout its history, Barcelona has shown that it is a city with initiative and great capacity for innovation. And thanks to this mentality, it has managed to make a place for itself in the Champions League of Europe's entrepreneurial capitals.

In fact, according to the Digital Startup Ecosystem Overview report, Barcelona is the fifth urban area behind London, Paris, Berlin, and Dublin in the number of startups, with a total of 1,100 organizations, capturing 58% of the total investments in the State with a figure of 453 million Euros. And in terms of technological entrepreneurship, Barcelona is the third most attractive city in Europe to create a new project, only surpassed by Berlin and London. Paraphrasing the writer Eduardo Mendoza, we could say that Barcelona has become the city of wonders... entrepreneurial wonders.

And it is that, in recent decades, Barcelona has built a first-class entrepreneurial ecosystem thanks, in large part, to the unique public-private collaboration model in which institutions, universities, and companies have joined efforts and which has coined the proper name of the 'Barcelona model'.

In this sense, the role played by Fira de Barcelona has been fundamental as an entity that has always been alongside companies and economic sectors. Thus, eight years ago, it supported the initiative of the Barcelona City Council to create Bizbarcelona by Barcelona Activa, the fair for entrepreneurship, SMEs, and social economy that has consolidated itself as a benchmark trade fair event.

At this moment, the fair promoted by the City Council, the Generalitat de Catalunya, CaixaBank, the Diputació de Barcelona, the Barcelona Metropolitan Area, PIMEC, and the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce wants to accompany companies in their digital transformation process and, in addition, accommodates initiatives from other economies that promote a new socioeconomic model such as, for example, those of social and solidarity economy, the economy of the common good or cooperativism, among others.

In this year's edition, Bizbarcelona by Barcelona Activa presents, as a major novelty, the area Biz Digital Experience by Sportmas, in which the latest trends and strategies will be presented for commerce and the restaurant sector to join the new era of digitalization of points of sale and will promote a change of model in the relationship with the client.

This new space joins the wide offer of the show that will take place on May 30 and 31 in halls 1 and 2 of the Montjuïc venue of Fira de Barcelona and which is structured around four blocks that have transformation as the main thematic axis, from technological to social, passing through economic and business. In addition, Bizbarcelona goes further with "The next", a space with inspiring presentations on the trends that are arriving.

Conferences with nearly 200 experts, multiple advisory spaces to create or grow businesses, networking activities, programs for export and access to new international markets, search for financing for business projects and the franchise system as a formula to undertake with less risk complete the proposal of Bizbarcelona by Barcelona Activa 2018.