“Just a year ago, at a table like this, there was a kind of widespread lament that we were languishing, that there was no pulse, projects, or ambition: a year later we are at a table with people and specific projects that are going to transform this city & rdquor ;. The first deputy mayor of the Barcelona City Council, James Collboni, is dispatched at ease on the stage of the last Annual Meeting of the Cercle d’Economia. The socialist politician refers above all to the possibility of the community accepting the winter Olympic Games or to the celebration of Sailing America’s Cup in 2024, but, in reality, not only sporting milestones prove him right: so far this year, fifteen international companies have expressed their intention to set up innovation or R&D centers in the city that function as world reference in its own within its companies.
The last one has been Universal Robots, a Denmark-based company that announced last week that it was converting its offices in Barcelona into the space where research, development and innovation around collaborative robotics for order preparation and packaging would be concentrated. This company, which last year entered around 300 million euros, intends to make only two other centers of the style in the world and none dedicated to ‘packaging’.
Less than ten days earlier, the Swiss medical technology company Ypsomed also inaugurated in the Catalan capital the first R&D center outside the borders of its country of origin and, not 24 hours later, the president of the international business of the American telemedicine group Teladoc Healthcare, Carlos Nueno, explained that the company would open an innovation center in the city. The first has hired 30 people and expects to incorporate another 30 during the year; the second has already signed 50 engineers and also calculates that it will double the number in the coming months.
They are not the 500 direct jobs that the battery component factory that the South Korean company Iljin has announced that it will lift in Mont Roig del Camp (Tarragona), but they do result in more industry and the multiplication of qualified jobs.
“An R&D center has a multiplier effect and can have a direct impact on our industry”, analyzes the director of Acció’s foreign investment attraction unit, Trini Bofarull. This expert refers to the fact that a large industrial company will most likely seek to develop collaborations with these technology companies, which can not only create products for them, but also develop customized solutions. “Each piece of this ecosystem nourishes it and makes it more competitive” adds this person in charge, who in fact confesses that although the industrial companies are still the priority when looking for potential operations, the second most important area is already for years the technology. “It is the basis of any product in any industry and helps improve its competitiveness & rdquor ;, she argues.
In addition, “all these centers make it increasingly valuable to have qualified staff and that, therefore, companies value it at higher levels”, explains Bofarull, who points to this impact on the labor market as one of the most favorable consequences of Barcelona becoming a benchmark for attracting centers of this style .
Call effect
In fact, it is not new that multinationals look to the city to settle here, but they do so to focus a good part of their innovation development. Because, as the Acció board of directors recalls, at first what Barcelona most attracted were customer service centersthen they were shared services networksin recent years they have been digital hubs and now it is fired towards the ‘deeptech‘ (the deep technology) and the R&D. “We have made a name for ourselves, and there is a call effect & rdquor ;, says Bofarull, who values it as very good news considering that this, in the end, gives work to “highly qualified professionals & rdquor ;.
It shows that amazon Y eDreams this year they have also reinforced their commitment to Barcelona as a technological epicenter by opening 100 technical positions in its technological ‘hub’ the first, and announced the hiring of 500 people the second; what AstraZenecathrough its North American biopharmaceutical Alexion, has expressed its intention to set up an R&D center, in this case for pharmacological research; what Bayer it is going to place a ‘LifeHub’ here that will function as a space for open innovation to transform health and agriculture; or what Intel open an advanced computer lab next to the Barcelona Supercomputing Center.
“We are more and more on the map, it is a virtuous circle & rdquor ;, explains the spokeswoman for Acció. “First because of the local talent: the engineers that come out of our universities are internationally recognized –continues Bofarull-; but also because international talent is very interested in coming to work in Catalonia, which has created this name of European technology hub”.
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And this happens both among technology companies as such (amazon, Intel, microsoft last year…), as in almost any of the key sectors for the Catalan economy: food (PepsiCo also last year), automotive (Porsche-Digital) and, lately above all, health.
“Barcelona has the talent and the opportunity to lead the health technology sector in Europe & rdquor ;, say, indeed, from Teladoc Health. “It combines the presence of qualified talent with a very powerful ecosystem in the field of health and life sciences: it is the ideal place to develop these digital solutions”, Ypsomed argues. “It is quickly becoming one of the most vibrant cities in the health sector, which is why it is an ideal location to explore and develop new therapeutic options that change the lives of patients & rdquor ;, concludes the biotech company owned by AstraZeneca.