Memoria 08 Innobasque IMP.qxd:Maquetación 1
16/6/09
17:42
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Translation Winning the future through innovation Board of Management On our way Barely a few weeks after celebrating Innobasque’s second anniversary, we have decided to present our view on the main issues in the Transformation process we are involved in, as well as on the complicated economic moment we are experiencing. Our aim has been to issue a publication that exceeds the traditional boundaries of an annual report. We are driven by a desire to “account for ourselves” to those whose dedication, cooperation and effort have made it possible for Innobasque to become what it is today – a fully consolidated reality. Sharing the same path, we have taken huge strides towards a goal that two years ago seemed beyond our reach: to mobilise our society, create the necessary stimulus for forging a highly ambitious vision of the future, with the key being a demanding process of self-betterment, readying ourselves to ensure that Euskadi, the Basque Country, achieves it: to one day become “the” European benchmark in innovation. On 5 July 2007, with the carefully thought out and disinterested transformation of Saretek into the Basque Innovation Agency, we began hoisting the flag of innovation. The call to arms has been a success, and in less than two years we have managed to marshal the involvement of 1,029 partners, with the cooperation in 45 i-Talde, i-Groups, of more than 1,103 leaders from all social, economic, higher educational, scientific-technological, institutional and cultural spheres, involving both the public and private sectors. The results already achieved far exceed even the wildest expectations of those who played a part in setting up Innobasque, which is firmly rooted in the enormous effort made beforehand by public institutions and private organisations. We should like to express our gratitude to these people who had the vision and determination to set in motion something so necessary, namely, cooperation between the public and private sectors. We should most especially like to thank the Basque president, the Lehendakari, Juan José Ibarretxe, who had the vision to back this project and support it at all times, as did other members of his government. In short, this prosperous and developed Basque society has responded to the call and opened the door to a new social reality in terms of cooperation, consistent with the complex challenges of the future that all societies like ours will have to face sooner than later. The road travelled so far is conducive to optimism, although the fruits will be harvested when we overcome the impact of the severe global recession we are suffering. There are those who accused Innobasque of spreading an alarmist message when the current crisis was no more than a vague threat on the horizon. Others considered us to be visionaries when we called for the immediate scrambling of resources for the transformation of our society. Those who placed their trust
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in this team and set up Innobasque had sufficient vision to pre-empt a situation of profound and serious crisis. Thanks to this we are now more prepared than ever to consider and build a Basque Country that is different and, of course, better.
people; about people who go about their daily business with their skills, knowledge and enthusiasm. Passing with flying colours in these three subjects (means, knowledge and wanting) will be vital for our future.
Within this context, any suggestion of complacency would be out of place. At Innobasque, we have adopted a realistic approach to our work, facing up to the current scenario, analysing it thoroughly and in depth to keep one step ahead and provide alternatives that will enable us to emerge in the right competitive position for guaranteeing our future.
In short, we have to be mindful of the fact that innovation is the main source for creating value added that will enable us to set ourselves apart, reinforce our skills and urge us on to continue challenging for pole position amongst the most developed societies.
This will not be an easy task, for we are facing wholly unprecedented economic and social circumstances of global crisis, whose impact and extent require decisive joint action. Within the field of innovation, we have already begun to record some promising results, as published at the end of March by Eustat. Thanks to the effort made in recent times by institutions, businesses, scientific-technological agents and all nature of organisations, the Basque Autonomous Community is on the verge of entering Europe’s “top ten” in Innovation, a goal that we had set ourselves to achieve by 2012. According to the “European Innovation Scoreboard EIS 2008”, the Basque Country, with a score of 0.49 in 2008, records a level of innovation that would place us in eleventh position amongst the countries in EU-27, surpassing the European average in innovation (0.48). This makes us one of the countries rated as “advanced in innovation”, alongside Austria, Ireland, Luxemburg, Belgium, France and the Netherlands. This position, which would have been unthinkable with the approach and programmes in place just a few years ago, cannot be attributed to chance, but rather to the huge amount of work that has been undertaken in recent years. Innovation will be the light that guides us through the tunnel we will have to traverse to overcome this crisis. My own personal and professional experience has taught me that the sun always shines after a storm, but it also true that it does not come out everywhere at the same time. The Basque Country is in a position to be one of the first to weather the storm and bathe in the sun’s new rays. We have no other goal. This crisis is an excellent opportunity, guided by necessity and knowledge, to address a profound change in our model of production and growth, which under the circumstances of “comfort” and “ease” in which we have lived in recent years would have been more difficult to undertake. In order to realise this essential change in model, Innobasque’s experience reveals that the knock-on potential of the public-private partnership is a fundamental platform for reinforcing the work of all stakeholders, in all areas. Reinforcing this partnership and operating it to full capacity is the main goal we have set ourselves for the coming months. Furthermore, we are going to make inroads in social mobilisation and in the orchestration of a powerful and efficient network of networks, with nodes that, each on its own particular wavelength,“vibrate” to the same frequency, in pursuit of our Basque Innovation Agency’s foundational goal: to make the Basque Country “the” European benchmark in innovation in 2030. When we refer to innovation, we are talking about
In order to make the Basque Country a benchmark for innovation in Europe, we have set ourselves a series of short, medium and long-term objectives, with determination and a high level of exigency, to fulfil that goal in the still distant year of 2030. To achieve it, we have the vision, the strategy, the commitment and the right people to face the huge challenge of transforming ourselves into a positively innovative society. Today, this is no more than a dream. Yet only dreamers change things. Innobasque seeks to bring about a far-reaching transformation for the better of Basque social and economic reality. We are striving to do this with the confidence of the support provided by our partners, by the people representing them who apply their considerable leadership skills in our Governing Bodies, and backed by the brilliant and dedicated work of the Innobasque team. To them all, my congratulations and gratitude. We face a daunting challenge: to mobilise the entire country, awakening it from the complacency inherent to a long period of plenty, and use the will to innovate to deploy the vast capacities we have. We need an innovative society because we have the highest aspirations, to be sure of a better future. Pedro Luis Uriarte Chairperson of Innobasque
Innovating for social cohesion No society is fully democratic unless it is socially cohesive. Hence, the recognition and unfettered exercise of individual political rights have to be compounded by public policies and private schemes that orchestrate society with a view to upholding the equal opportunities of all those people that are part of it. There is no doubt that the Basque Country has achieved levels of cohesion and human development that are on a par with the most advanced nations in the developed world. Accordingly, when at Innobasque we consider the second major transformation of Euskadi, the Basque Country, through innovation, we must not lose sight of that key component of our mission, namely, innovating for social cohesion. This is not a matter that is exclusive to the public domain, but also applies, and especially so, to the private sector. I cannot see it possible, in the necessary transformation that we are undertaking in these first years of the new century, to address transformation processes whose sole purpose is the creation of economic value. I do not consider it feasible to apply innovative strategies in our companies if they are not focused on value creation for all stakeholders and for society at large. This inevitably leads us to consider human beings and their needs as the ultimate goal for the community activities of institutions, business-