Barcelona New Economy Week (Bnew), the event on the new economy organized by the Barcelona Free Trade Zone Consortium (CZFB), was born during the pandemic seeking to promote economic reactivation. At the end of 2020, most attendees attended virtually. But Covid has now definitively passed and this year the forum, which ended this Thursday, experienced marked growth in its in-person aspect.
According to the CZFB in a statement, this year more than 12,500 professionals attended the event held at the DFactory, the public entity's building dedicated to industry 4.0. A total of 8,316 did so in person and 4,192 via the internet. These figures mean consolidating the attendance audience compared to the 2022 edition and growing in attendance. Twelve months ago, attendance was distributed with 6,000 in-person attendees and 6,500 online.
“Bnew is unique in the world and we are very proud of the participation figures of this fourth edition,” said the special delegate of the State at the CZFB, Pere Navarro.
Networking also increased, going from 5,500 contacts in 2022 to more than 8,000 this year. Of them, 2,000 were carried out through a digital platform developed by the CZFB. “We have contributed to generating new business opportunities, boosting the territory's economy and sharing knowledge and experiences among professionals. Barcelona, once again, has positioned itself as the capital of the new economy,” said Pere Navarro.
In this edition, the digitalization of the real estate and health sectors were incorporated as new themes. The event featured 350 speakers, who offered 140 hours of content spread across 100 panels. The initiative reached an international participation of 30%, with attendees from 103 countries. “Organizing an event of this magnitude is a challenge and a great responsibility and we have managed, once again, to consolidate Bnew as an essential event,” said the general director of the CZFB, Blanca Sorigué.
A total of eighty emerging companies competed this time for the Bnew awards. Agualytics won the award in the sustainability vertical, Vecla obtained recognition in the mobility category, HDR in the talent field, Myorcare in health; Additive Spaces in proptech and Zentinel Machine Data Solutions in digital industry.
