The Círculo Ecuestre hosted this Thursday a new chapter of the Barcelona Capital Forum called The economic hubs of Barcelona.
After the presentation by the vice president of the Círculo Ecuestre, Enrique Lacalle, Josep Maria Martorell, associate director of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center-National Supercomputing Center (BSC-CNS); Rita Almela, founder of Redwoods Dynamics, and Pasqual Batalla, director of operations of Socialpoint, held a dialogue moderated by Anna Gener, CEO Barcelona of the real estate consultancy Savills.
Josep Maria Martorell was the first to express his opinion on the economic hubs of Barcelona. After revealing to the members that "the Marenostrum 5 supercomputer will be launched in the autumn and will be 30 times more powerful than its predecessors", the director of the innovative center, the largest in Europe, defined Barcelona as "an unbeatable city in the talent retention area".
For her part, the founder of Redwoods Dynamics, a company focused on technological solutions that include state-of-the-art robot assistants, Rita Almela, urged "generating greater synergies and collaborations between the different actors in the ecosystem: research centers, universities, schools of business, entrepreneurial ecosystem, corporations, public sector”. "These actors have to work in an international framework, generating global bridges," she added with the aim of nominating the Catalan capital as one of the world's leading hubs. “The corporate world and startups have to create synergies to acquire more value in both fields and boost the economic level of the city,” she said. The directive gave Nestlé or Amazon as an example, as companies that trust Barcelona to locate their strategic hubs.
Pasqual Batalla, as an expert in the video game industry, pointed out to the attendees that the sector, which in recent years has become larger in turnover than the film and music industries combined, "needs the attraction of multidisciplinary talent with the aim of continuing to grow”.
“The global video game industry has grown aggressively in the last decade. It has emerged stronger from the pandemic and will continue to grow thanks to the incorporation of new users from regions such as India, Brazil or Africa, with the improvement of technologies and also due to an organic generational change”, predicted the expert. Batalla stressed that "although Barcelona has done a good job so far and the results are being seen in the creation of jobs, the attraction of international companies and the creation of local companies, much remains to be done if it wants to aspire to be in the world top three in the video game industry”.
In the second part of the colloquium, Anna Gener wanted to know the opinion of the experts in reference to the keys that the city of Barcelona should apply to become a first level hub.
Martorell urged "put administrative problems aside to take a big step forward", pointing out that "our great barrier to catching the big players at the international level are administrative problems". In her turn to speak, Rita Almela called for the "need for digital and technological training, attraction of international talent and retention of talent", assuring that "there are a lack of jobs and many more will be missing". The board of directors once again insisted on "public-private collaborations, which will add a lot of value and will make startups have the capacity to grow" and encouraged them to "defend and show off the Barcelona brand". Finally, Pasqual Batalla detected as aspects of improvement "a world-renowned video game training hub, an international event in the sector that attracts professionals from the industry, equalizing corporate tax to other creative industries such as film and animation, improving in diversity, equality and labor inclusion and the coordination of the actors of the ecosystem towards the same vision”.
The analysis carried out by the experts led to the creation of a new roadmap to be followed by administrations and companies with the aim of raising the Catalan capital to the next level.