"With Pier 07, our goal is for health innovation to meet business"

Tech Barcelona begins its expansion with the inauguration this week of the Via Laietana hub, specialized in the health sector. It comes after the success of Pier 01, the building located in Port Vell where startups and corporations coexist under one roof since 2016. It filled completely the same year it was inaugurated, showing that more spaces like this were needed in the city. It expanded its reach with Pier 03, very close to the original and initially specialized in blockchain, and seven years later, comes what has been called Pier 07.

In the former headquarters of the defunct Departament de Polítiques Digitals, workers are these days finishing the last details, after having completely remodeled a building that had become outdated. Wood and light dominate the space, with privileged views of the city, especially of the cathedral. The developer and construction company Nuñez i Navarro, owner of the building, has been in charge of the renovation and has assumed the entire investment, with a budget of 7 million euros. In an interview with The New Barcelona Post, the CEO of Tech Barcelona, Miquel Martí, explains how the new health hub wants to relate to the city's health centers and research institutes, with agreements already signed with Vall de Hebron, Bellvitge, and Sant Joan de Déu hospitals.

--- How would you define this new hub?

--- Pier 01 and Pier 03 are mostly transversal spaces, where we have many types of companies of different sizes. Here we understand the building in the broadest possible sense of the health sector. We talk about biotech, digital health, health tech, medtech... To do this, the project has to be systemic. How? Through alliances. First, going where the knowledge is, in this case, mostly in hospitals; but without linking the brand to any center, since we want it to be a space where everyone feels comfortable.

--- How can health centers participate in a space for entrepreneurs?

--- The job of hospitals is not to incubate companies. However, they have many doctors and nurses eager to create businesses from the knowledge they accumulate. They need to identify us as a space where they can come to promote their projects, where there is a fast track with the innovation teams of all centers. But not only with hospitals. For example, the future Mercat del Peix is very focused on research and does not intend to create large incubators. These companies need a place to land. The goal is that, at Pier 07, health innovation meets business, meaning that solutions are developed that are applicable and economically sustainable, either because they have clients or investors. In this sense, we have had biotechs come to us that remain in the science parks where they have their laboratories, but they have the ambition to be companies, rather than spin-offs of research groups, and they want to have a certain connection with the business reality, with greater contact with investors and potential partners.

--- Who will inhabit the new health Pier?

--- Buildings are the materialization of an ecosystem. Therefore, you need everything. Obviously, startups, scale-ups, and corporations. Who do we want to come? First, companies that are designing solutions, but also their users; the buyer must be involved. We also need to attract pharmaceutical companies that want to innovate through collaboration. Companies like Novartis, Ferrer, and Boehringer do not need office space, but they are looking for a platform to discuss technology in an integrated way. The other part that interests us are service firms: law, consulting, and investment. The vocation is to bring together the maximum amount of talent and companies. We will start with an investor, Asabys Partners, who has occupied the entire fifth floor, and a Tech Barcelona coworking. We have to build an ecosystem that allows all parts to be recognized, as if it were an exhibition that allows talking with the different members in a one-hour visit.

"We have to build an ecosystem that allows all parts to be recognized, as if it were an exhibition that allows talking with the different members in a one-hour visit"

--- In the beginning, it will occupy one floor, the first one, which is the largest; we will see if we add a second one. If we follow the same coworking philosophy we have at Pier 01, it will have a capacity of between 15 and 20 startups at most. For now, we already have a few companies that have confirmed they will come. Afterwards, we have to see how we occupy the rest of the floors to get the maximum number of installed companies. Depending on how each one distributes the space they contract, there could be between 400 and 500 workers. I hope it will be full in six months.

--- From Via Laietana, how will you interact with the rest of the Barcelona ecosystem?

--- None of the three buildings we have, nor those we will have, intend to be self-contained spaces. There are always two parts. A permanent one, which are the companies that are installed. And the other is temporary. What interests us? Bringing in third-party content: hosting technology showrooms, presenting studies, organizing activities... Normally, we will do it in the auditorium we have on floor 0. We want it to be a space where things happen. If things only happen from the companies that are here, this will be a failure.

--- How will you fit in with the other health hub in the city, the Barcelona Health Hub, specialized in digital health?

--- It is positive that there are other realities in the city and the Barcelona Health Hub is a magnificent place, which is also located in a very central spot, recovering an environment that is very much associated with the UAB and Sant Pau hospital. It is one more player.

--- Pier 07 is the first part of the Urban Tech Campus project, the network of buildings dedicated to promoting entrepreneurship in specific sectors that they want to extend throughout Barcelona. How should we imagine it?

--- After having launched Pier 01 and Pier 03, we started thinking about how we had to grow because we continued to have demand. We like to receive inputs from many different industries, not just one. That's why the urban campus is important. Technology is the driver and we will go to all those industries where there is a strategic interest and a critical mass. In the case of health, both factors are present. In Catalonia, we have the entire value chain, which does not happen in many industries, and, furthermore, we have a research system with brutal potential. In fact, according to the latest Biocat report, investment has practically doubled in one year. At the association level, we had to somehow transfer this. When we have the campus integrated by other spaces, knowledge will be able to transfer from one place to another. For example, blockchain technology is mainly being applied in the fintech world. When the Pier of the Barcelona Stock Exchange building is finished, we want them to come to Via Laietana to explain what they do. The idea is to build a neural network where there are permanent information synapses between all nodes. We want a certain heterogeneity and feedback from different knowledge.

"The idea is to build a neural network where there are permanent information synapses between all nodes"

--- The Urban Tech Campus project puts the citizen at the center and asks how they live through technology. We established four pillars. One, how mobility and urban space move and are redefined. Second, how they take care of themselves and are taken care of. The first part is prevention, which includes food and sport. We will probably consider this having a separate life, even though things that are very related may happen at Pier 07. Here we will focus on the second part, how the health system, public and private, treats them. Thirdly, how they shop, which is the main activity a person does in the city. Therefore, rethinking the physical store, its relationship with the virtual store, last-mile logistics... I hope that very soon we can make an announcement about this aspect. And, finally, we want to talk about sustainability, a transversal element in all axes.

--- Where does the fintech hub fit in?

--- In this whole process, what has happened is that knowledge partners have approached us, bringing us ideas and proposing that we also work in other industries. In the case of fintech, Barcelona is not a country capital and, therefore, is not a great financial capital, but it is a great creative capital. What we want is to enter the world of finance through technology and give prominence to the city.