President’s Foreword
2011 has been a year of strong global economic crisis, which was even more dramatic in Spain. Fedit Technology Centers have been exploring ways to reinvent themselves: exploring new niche markets with high growth potential, expanding their capabilities to international technology transfer markets and exploiting areas of R&D to generate new business initiatives. Reductions in state public funding of recent years have caused the cancellation of several programs to help R&D activities in Fedit Technology Centers. Meanwhile, funding from regional governments and international programs increased slightly, allowing Fedit Technology Centers to increase, to some extent, their revenue through competitive calls. Trying to anticipate the adverse effects associated with the reduction of public resources for their sustenance, Fedit Centers are focusing their efforts towards increasing their capacity and efficiency for generating new businesses out of their research results.
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Salvador Bresó President of Fedit
2011 has been a very complex year but, despite the difficulties, the support of the associated Technology Centers and that of the Federation staff, have allowed carrying forward the great majority of projects in Fedit Action Plan for this year. I would like to expressly thank the team for their generosity and effort at times as complex as those experienced during this year. The last few months have been marked by the strong financial stress associated with the big debt that regional governments have towards the Technology Centers. In an extremely unfavorable environment like this, the situation is likely to endanger the continuity of some outstanding Technology Centers in their area of activity. The total amount of debt is associated with projects under development and / or completed and justified. We nevertheless are confident that the problem of this default is solved as soon as possible to avoid the collapse of institutions working to improve the competitiveness of the business and economic development of their environment, highly necessary in the current scenario. Despite of the unfavorable environment, the activity conducted by Fedit Technology Centers during recent years and the results they have obtained allow us to conclude that Fedit Technology Centers are the most effective Spanish research organizations in the support of business R&D and have clearly shown an impact on economic growth, employment and business investment in R&D&I.
Fedit. Annual Report 2011