Today we visited three companies, Barcelona Activa, Hutchinson Port, and KIC Innoenergy.
Barcelona Activa is a company similar to Barcelona Tech City in terms of the company being an association for companies and growing entrepreneurs to find help and support one another. Their location fosters innovation and innovational ideas in the form of educational assistance comprising of welcome groups, classes, and free spaces to work.
Hutchinson Port is one of the biggest and most important lines of international transportation of commercial goods for Barcelona and Southern Europe. Within the tour of the inner workings of the port, we learned that their logistical setup comprising of automatic and manual labor is what makes them efficient 24 hours a day. The data that they have of their successful operations helps them to easily market themselves to numerous worldwide shipping companies.
Lastly, KIC Innoenergy is an association that supports and invests in business creation with the main focus in renewable energy. While they are an association, they are also a for profit company that is not publically traded which means that the companies that they choose to help build must perfectly fit their heavy criteria for support in order to ensure success.
What I found most interesting about Barcelona Activa was the fact that they are constantly changing and updating their resources that they provide through the help of surveys. To me, the fact that they receive enough response for things that need improvement or that need to be a part of the company is huge because many companies struggle with this and the fact that they are easily able to make these changes is incredibly important. I remember one change that they are working on establishing is building more programs for female entrepreneurs and their companies to grow. I found that to be so important because I know it will help to simply bring in more business for Barcelona Activa but it will also help women achieve an equal stance in the playing field in terms of business and business innovation and inspire other companies and associations with that success.
From the entire day, I found KIC Innoenergy to be the most fascinating company we’ve visited even with their similarities to Barcelona Tech City and Barcelona Activa. Being a for profit company that invests in renewable energy startups seems like a complicated business format, but the fact that they have a strict list of credentials that companies need to have to be supported its easy to see why their company survival rate is so high. I found it important that they don’t just support anyone with an idea and that they make applicants work hard to prove their sustainability because realistically not all ideas will survive or be able to reach the capacity that entrepreneurs imagine that the idea will achieve. There is always that possibility of failure, and if you are able to find a resource that will let you know that something may not keep this idea successful then it gives you a new opportunity to create something better and not lose everything. That’s why I find their process for investment important, plus I can also see how it helps them to market to companies because they have the statistics to prove their success and give entrepreneurs an idea for the potential they could have should they reach out to KIC. That talk really helped to inspire me to make sure to look for the details within ideas and make sure that I am able to help others to see the pure success in those ideas too.
