Mondragon Unibertsitatea wins a competition of the Barcelona City Council to regenerate industrial areas through entrepreneurship by promoting an innovation hub
Mondragon Unibertsitatea wins a competition of the Barcelona City Council to regenerate industrial areas through entrepreneurship by promoting an innovation hub
Mondragon Unibertsitatea wins a competition of the Barcelona City Council to regenerate industrial areas through entrepreneurship by promoting an innovation hub
The university's Business Faculty will set up the "Barcelona Circular Hub" in the warehouse on Ciudad de Asunción street, in the Besòs axis, which will specialize in the development of entrepreneurship in circular economy and industry 4.0.
The Business Faculty of Mondragon Unibertsitatea has won a competition launched by the Barcelona City Council to regenerate and reactivate several industrial areas of the city through entrepreneurship. The City Council of the capital has just made public the winning projects to revitalize three disused industrial buildings in Besòs and 22@, through which new poles of innovation, talent attraction and investment will be created, diversifying the economy of Barcelona. The announcement of the call for operators was made in autumn 2022, and today the strategic projects and the private partners that together with the City Council and through Barcelona Activa will develop the projects have been presented.
The winning initiatives were those of Mondragon Unibertsitatea, Palo Alto BCN XRLAB and IAAC for the Asunción (Sant Andreu-Bon Pastor), Palo Alto (22@) and Ávila (22@) buildings, respectively. In all cases, the City Council has valued the ability to promote entrepreneurship, business competitiveness, sustainability, knowledge of the sector of each pole of activity, social return, and the fit with the objectives of the Barcelona Green Deal agenda.
The Creative Industries hub in Palo Alto is scheduled to start operating in 2024; and progressively, the other two hubs, the Urban Innovation hub (Ávila building) and the Industry 4.0 hub (City of Asunción building), will start operating in 2025. The operation of the new economic activity hubs will have an impact on 250 SMEs and start-ups, including incubation, acceleration, innovation support and financing programs. In addition, the new hubs will have the capacity to train more than 1,000 students a year in innovation and technology, and another 4,500 people a year in dissemination activities, events and community building.
The winning project to be promoted by the Business Faculty of Mondragon Unibertsitatea will work on the "Barcelona Circular Hub" initiative to promote new circular economy business models through entrepreneurship and accompany the digital transformation of SMEs. This new hub of economic activity will be located in the warehouse at 16, Ciudad de Asunción Street, in the Bon Pastor neighborhood of Sant Andreu. This warehouse has a surface area of 3,356 m2.
The initiative aims to support local talent and fabric combined with the attraction of companies and international creative talent, and the promotion of a competitive and innovative industrial sector. It will include start-ups and key companies in the industry of the 21st century, and will offer continuous training in the business context.
The new hub will include a laboratory of the LEINN entrepreneurship network - Degree in Entrepreneurial Leadership and Innovation managed by TeamLabs. The pole will develop areas of Data Science, an Observatory of innovation and trends in industry 4.0 and circular economy, business incubation services, start-up acceleration and training activities.
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In the words of the Barcelona City Council itself, this strategy of collaboration with private companies that will give life to each pole of activity "has been inspired by international examples, such as the Brooklyn Navy Yard (New York) in the development of urban areas, Station F (Paris) in business incubators, or the regeneration of the island of Zorrotzaurre (Bilbao) in a creative and cultural meeting point, allowing the strengthening of local economies".