In the opening article - “Art and industry make for a gaudy mix” – Victor Mallet, the UK based newspaper’s top journalist in Spain, provides an overview of how Barcelona throughout history has been open to the new and, time after time, managed to rebuild and modernize itself. One of his interviewees, Julia Prats from the business school IESE, considers that the city has a few years of unproductive nostalgia behind it, but that the crisis now seems to galvanize civil society into action. The same source praises local initiatives to create clusters in industries where Barcelona is already strong but at the same time raises a finger about public financing. “Can bureaucrats choose winners? And is the funding sustainable in an age of austerity?”, she asks.

In “From car door panels to hybrid batteries”, Miles Johnsson investigates what happens to the automotive industry when a lot of the manufacturing is being moved to Eastern Europe. This is a big challenge for Catalonia where cars, as late as 2009, represented 10% of the regional output and 15% of the exports, but has since dropped sharply. According to the journalist, the hope stands not so much with the admittedly strong but foreign owned automotive groups, like Volkswagen or Renault, but rather with their local mid-sized systems and component suppliers. Some of these are moving over to high-tech, environmentally friendly technology and that will make it possible for them to expand abroad.

How to adapt your business model to the global market is also what the following article – “Hub faces intense competition” – is about. Here Miles Johnsson tries to find out what future there is to many of the family-owned local pharmaceutical companies. Montserrat Vendrell, from BioCat, thinks that “funding research is strategically important for a country that wants to create its own knowledge-based economy”, but at the same time expresses her doubts whether Catalonia can take a lead in biomedical technology. With stiff competition and a lack of international private funding it is difficult to do the large-scale investments needed, the expert concludes.

In the article “City vibrant despite economic stagnation” we find an interesting chart, showing that Barcelona is the only one of Spain’s six biggest cities where investments continue, even in these times of crisis. The figures confirm the impressions which Victor Mallet gathered from a breakfast meeting with Catalan entrepreneurs at Gild International. Among the people he quotes we find Pau Garcia-Milà, from the software developer EyeOS. The young entrepreneur complains about venture capitalists’ unfavourable valuation of Barcelona based businesses, yet he admits that there are also benefits since “being in a high-tech sector in Spain makes you a big fish in a relatively small pond, whereas California is an ocean”. For his part, Salvador García, a banker, points out that what makes Barcelona and Catalonia unique are its “entrepreneurial spirit” and “a kind of innovation atmosphere”.

Under the headline “Conferences provide €2.5bn boost to city”, Miles Johnsson shows how Fira de Barcelona has managed to build a solid position in the international exhibition business, capitalizing on the strong brand name of the city of Barcelona. That this is a win-win situation is exemplified on the one hand by the many hotel nights and restaurant meals each event generates, but even more so through specialized ones. ITMA – the textile garment machinery exhibition coming up in September this year – is strategically important since it underlines Barcelona’s position in the world of clothing design and manufacturing.

Rounding off the report on an positive note, in “Reinventing the gourmet” Victor Mallet relates a visit to the restaurant el Bulli. Here Ferran Adrià gets the opportunity to talk about how he introduced the concept of creativity in the world of cooking, while most people considered that absurd when he started. “In my case, creativity isn’t work; it forms part of my life”, the international star-chef says.

At BcnIn we feel highly encouraged by this new report. It confirms that Barcelona starts to be successful in positioning itself as a city of innovation and creativityon the global level.
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Find here the full Financial Times Report “Barcelona – Innovative & Creative Business”

You might also be interested in their report “Doing Business in Catalonia”, issued in May 2010.