Guía para vivir y trabajar en Bizkaia

The Basque Country has a deeply rooted tradition of industry, and the competitiveness of this sector has been recognised at a European level. For decades, industry has been one of the strongest features of our economy. To maintain our competitiveness, the Basque Government has over the last three decades implemented many different measures clearly orientated at improving quality, innovation and technology. It has also implemented science and technology policies designed to support the existing industrial sector and to prepare it for facing the challenges of the future.

Strategies have been designed which are aimed at positioning the skills of all the parties involved in its innovation system in an international context, supporting economic growth and diversification into future sectors based on science and technology, as a way of meeting the needs of a dynamic and complex global society.

In the 1980s, with innovation as the main driver, industrial restructuring took place which led to the development of technological infrastructures and strategic planning which promoted business R&D.

In 1981, the Basque Government created the Society for Industrial Promotion, SPRI, www.spri.es, intended to support Basque business in its strategies for launching companies, innovating, growing and becoming more international. Another of the initiatives carried out was the creation of the Bizkaia Technology Park in 1985, where outstanding R&D companies and technology centres are. This pioneering model within Spain has been extended across the three different regions, creating a Network of Technology Parks in the Basque Country. www.rpte.net

The 1990s was the decade in which the main Basque sectors formed “clusters” (sector-based organisations) in order to develop an industry based on technical and commercial collaboration among the companies in the sector and between these and third parties. The 1990s also saw the promotion of the technology centres, which one decade later would result in the creation of two large groups: IK4 (www.ik4.es), and TECNALIA (www.tecnalia.com). The strategy of the Centres is aimed at business competitiveness, diversification into high value sectors, the innovation culture and the internationalisation of the Basque Innovation System.

Similarly, in 1997, driven by the Basque Government, the Basque Science, Technology and innovation Network was created, in order to combine the forces of all the public and private organisations involved in fostering the use of Science, Technology and Innovation as a way of improving the competitiveness of business and contributing to the economic and social development of the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country. In 2007, this network was brought into the Basque Innovation Agency, Innobasque.

This agency was created in order to head up the Second Economic and Social Transformation of the Basque Country. Innobasque, from the initial premise that it is people who innovate, has focussed on talent as the central feature of the new socio-economic model based on knowledge and the ability to innovate as the key to the transformation of the Basque Country in terms of innovation in 2030.

In addition to this work, since 2000, many highly significant initiatives and projects in the Basque Country have been implemented with the aim of achieving a real model of an Innovative Country.

Firstly, bizkaia:xede (www.bizkaiaxede.org) was created in 2004. This non-profit associative initiative is promoted by the Department of Economic Development of the Provincial Government of Bizkaia, jointly by a group of outstanding companies and universities an other entities based in Bizkaia. Its aim is to promote and foster the conditions and process for retaining, attracting and connecting highly qualified people, thereby improving the areas of innovation and advanced knowledge in the organisations in Bizkaia.

Secondly, at the end of 2006 the Ikerbasque Foundation was created, www.ikerbasque.net. Its objective is to contribute to the stimulation, promotion and development of scientific, humanist and technological research and knowledge in the development of scientific research in the Basque Country, through attracting and retaining research talent.

One of the functions of the Ikerbasque Foundation is to reinforce and develop the Basque System of Science, through promoting new BERCs (Basque Excellence Research Centres), in order to promote the Basque Country as an international benchmark for research.

Finally, in July 2007 the Basque Council for Science, Technology and Innovation, was created with the aim of becoming the leading organisation for participating in, advising on and leading the policies relating to science, technology, research and innovation in the Basque Country.

Innobasque, Ikerbasque and the Basque Council for Science, Technology and Innovation are the three pillars supporting research and innovation policies in the Basque Country, and together are known as the “Basque trident of innovation”.

This decade also stands out for its policy on the creation of Cooperative Research Centres (CICs); centres that were founded to develop both basic and applied research. In other words, their main function is to exploit and transfer the results generated to the industrial sector using instruments such as spin offs, patents, licenses, etc.