Data from the latest report “Global Entrepreneurship Monitor; “GEM” 2022-2023[1] indicate that Catalonia continues to lead entrepreneurial activity in Spain with a TEA of 6.9%. That is, 337,031 people aged 18 to 64 are involved in entrepreneurial activities for 0 to 3.5 years.
The TEA is an indicator that allows us to quantify the entrepreneurial intensity of a country, being a good indicator of the business dynamics of the territory.
Catalonia remains the autonomous community with the highest rate, with a TEA 0.9 points higher than the Spanish average (6.0%), but, nevertheless, it is 2.3 points below the European average (9.2%).
In recent years, the Catalan startup ecosystem has experienced a 75% increase in the number of emerging companies since 2016.[2], consolidating itself as the first startup hub in southern Europe; “a fact that helps position Catalonia as a leading country in innovation at the service of technological and green transformation.”
The creation of new jobs in recent years indicates that Catalan emerging companies employ 19,300 people.
On the other hand, it is highlighted that 76% of entrepreneurs in the initial phase have undergraduate or postgraduate studies, 17 percentage points more than in 2021 (59%). The level of education has an important value as a sign of productive ability and success in decision-making.
Research indicates that entrepreneurial human capital and the level of formal education determine, to a large extent, the ability to identify business opportunities, the degree of success in making the decision to create one’s own company, orienting it towards innovation and growth, and the implementation of the chosen strategy.
In Catalonia, there is a clear innovative orientation, 47% of companies work with technologies linked to deep tech, based on a scientific discovery or an engineering innovation. By technologies, the use by the Catalan artificial intelligence and big data startups (36% of the total), ahead of cloud and edge computing technologies (14%), automation (10%), the internet of things and sensors (9%), connectivity (4%), augmented and virtual reality (4%), bioengineering (3%) and blockchain (3%).
Similarly, 46% of Catalan emerging companies have a patent or system to protect their knowledge, such as a utility model or industrial secret.
Thus, it is confirmed that the stock of scientific knowledge becomes decisive and the mechanisms for translating this knowledge into the market are decisive for generating technological and business innovation.
Taking into account these strengths of the territory, it becomes a challenge to increase the business fabric to be more competitive by promoting technology-based entrepreneurship.
Focusing on the field of artificial intelligence, Catalonia has had an artificial intelligence strategy for Catalonia since 2019 (Catalonia.ai[3]), with the mission of positioning the country in a privileged situation to lead the development and adoption of this technology in southern Europe and to position it as a global technological hub in this discipline.
The strategy focuses part of its action on knowledge transfer through pull and push mechanisms, through CIDAI[4] and DCA-IA[5] and with the reinforcement of the Transfer Network (RDI-AI Network[6]) to push, among others, activities to promote scientific entrepreneurship.
This has allowed us to focus efforts on validating the need to create a Program for validating new business ideas based on artificial intelligence technologies.
Ideation programs such as AI4ALL[7] have served as the basis for developing a first pilot entrepreneurship program (AIACCELERATOR) intensive and mainly business-oriented, to identify consumers of different technological ideas and address legal and financing issues to raise capital from private investment funds. All with the support of ecosystem mentors, serial technology entrepreneurs.
This first pilot ended with the presentation of the projects within the framework of the 4YFN by the Director General of Innovation, Digital Economy and Entrepreneurship of the Government, Mr. Lluís Juncà and before a jury of experts in entrepreneurship and early-stage investment.
The success of this pilot has allowed the foundations to be laid for the creation of what will be the first technology-based entrepreneurship program specializing in artificial intelligence.
References
[1] https://www.institutmetropoli.cat/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Informe_GEM_2022-23_cat.pdf [2] https://govern.cat/salapremsa/notes-premsa/418126/catalunya-compta-1900-startups-2021-11-percent-mes-que-any-anterior [3] https://participa.gencat.cat/uploads/decidim/attachment/file/818/Document-Bases-Estrategia-IA-Catalunya.pdf [4] https://cidai.eu/es/ [5] https://dca.cat/ca/dca-ia/ [6] https://xarxardi-ia.cat/ [7] https://www.ai4all.cat/
