Around the same table, different professionals from the Valencian entrepreneurship and business fabric participated yesterday in a meeting of the Diálogos La Vanguardia cycle held at the offices of GoHub Ventures, the corporate investment fund of the company Global Omnium. The debate was moderated by Salvador Enguix, delegate of La Vanguardia in the Valencian Community.
It promoted the Startup Valencia event, the association that brings together more than 300 startups from the Valencian Community and whose CEO, Nacho Mas, yesterday asked for more cooperation between the business fabric so that “innovation is truly open”.
The Minister of Innovation, Universities, Science and Digital Society, Josefina Bueno, listened carefully to him, who highlighted the collaborative work carried out from the science parks, "an example that you can also collaborate in that change of mentality that makes missing to drive innovation.”
Bueno affirmed that they are "a link between people who come out of universities and companies" and assumed that it is necessary to continue working in this line from the Valencian Government. "Digitization does not have to remain in the business fabric because if it does not reach everyone we will have failed," he added.
The new Science Law or the improvement of the doctorate program are tools that, according to the Minister, allow innovation to leave the theoretical framework and also land in the business fabric, as an element in addition to territorial cohesion.
"For example, without the Miguel Hernández University of Alicante and the Jaume I University of Castellón, the economic progress of the two provinces would not be understood, because they create nodes, take out talent and advise," he argued.
Opposite was Esther Gómez, vice-rector of the Polytechnic University of Valencia, who explained that "before the University researched and offered its research to the market, but now it also listens to the company and provides solutions to provide technology that solves the challenges of the industry".
Both collected in their analyzes the gauntlet thrown from the business fabric, since the debate included the participation of Patricia Pastor, general director of GoHub Ventures; Joaquín del Río, Director of Innovation and Quality at Vicky Foods; Vicent Albert Revert, Director of Product and Technology at Jeanología and Eva Giner, Director of Innovation at SPB.
Pastor pointed out how the digitalization of Global Omnium took place over a decade and assumed that "spending ten years facing a conservative mentality within your own company is not easy."
Because the key is not only in the tools, but also in the structures, routines, ways of doing things, the participants agreed. "There has to be a greater growth in the percentage of digitization in this country," said Pastor
Overcoming resistance to change happens inside, but also outside. For Vicent Albert Revert, "the digitalization of doors to the inside is very consolidated, but the client needs time".
Eva Giner added that in this process of convincing its benefits, it is also important to disclose that this is "a source of growth and also of internal efficiency", although she believed that the problem is that "we never know how far you go and how to exploit it".
For large corporations such as Vicky Foods, a company in the agri-food sector, innovation "is either open or it is almost non-innovative, because skills and knowledge are transmitted quickly and if you don't follow them, you are left behind," warned its director. of Innovation and Quality, Joaquín del Río, who numbered the four key elements to create an “adequate ecosystem”: the participation of companies, a technology center, universities and administrations are the 4 axes.
"A lot is being done individually, but we lack the common work that makes us transfer knowledge to enrich each other," he considered.
