Ramon Gras Alomà recently contributed an article to La Vanguardia. In this article, he explains how urban planning can improve economies over the short, medium, and long term. He describes how Boston, Massachusetts is one of the premier case studies of a city with multiple innovation centers, which focus on knowledge transfer and subsequently create more employment and prosperity for surrounding communities. Frontier research within these centers helps foster new innovations to solve the complex challenges of the 21st century such as automation, climate change, poverty, and inequality.
Read the article here.
Ramon then proceeds to analyze the Barcelona innovation ecosystem, which he describes as home to many talented innovators suffering from a deficit of tech transfer spaces, mechanisms and research-industry synergies. He explains that Barcelona could foster a network of strategically located technology transfer centers designed to serve as bridges between research and the private sector in order to regenerate decaying urban areas and galvanize the knowledge economy present there. If the knowledge transfer centers are designed to connect critical stakeholders such as universities, startups and industry in a collaborative organization focused on strengthening the innovation pipeline, Barcelona has the chance to become a European Hub for Innovation.