Executive summary of the director of Paradigme

Llarch, Enric

Revistes Catalanes amb Accés Obert

The future opportunities for the Catalan economy
in overcoming the crisis are the basis of the
monograph of the Paradigmes issue no. 3. If in the
previous monograph we were thinking on the
more or less situational or structural character of
the current global recession, here we focus on the
Catalan economy and suggest ways to successfully
overcome the current economic storm.
The monograph opens with a general overview
over the general trends of the world economy
and the current situation of the Catalan. The two
first texts by Maite Ardèvol, from the Observa-
tory of Foreign Markets of ACC1Ó and Xavier
Sala i Martín from Columbia University create a
very suggesting dialogue on the immediate fu-
ture of the global economy in matters covering
from the role the American economy will play
to the future of middle classes and overrating of
the yuan. 
Riel Miller from XPeridoX: Futures Consulting
looks out in his turn to the long term regarding
overall transformations of the economy, pointing
out that we have a very strong trend to react to
crisis situations by trying to come back to the con-
ditions of the past. He recommends to change the
focus and be imaginative.
Salvador Estapé, from IESE, sets out an overall
picture of the Catalan economy, devoting special
attention to the combination of productivity, 
innovation and foreign balance of different pro-
duction industries. According to the author, the
evolution of these metrics explains together with
the business model the degree of strength of the dif-
ferent industries and companies in our economy.
Xavier Salvador’s interview with Jordi Cartanyà
from CIRIT opens the block devoted to innovation.
Being in charge of the NPRI and its action plan,
Cartanyà points out his idea that all that is not oc-
curring and should occur regarding innovation
should be promoted by public authorities. To him,
the economic structure of an innovating society is
not industrial anymore, by which everybody stays
at in their branch. There will be no industries but
metaindustries. These are to be understood as the
convergence of activities or segments of activities
from different traditional industries replacing the
similitude of the end product or service as the
common denominator by new common production
processes or to serve new sorts of demand.
In this respect, we introduce two documents of ut-
most interest. The first is a summary of the ideas
that, as the NPRI is being developed, have led to
identify twenty industries or metaindustries research
and innovation in Catalonia could focus on in the
next years. These metaindustries shall tackle future
challenges in which R&D&I plays a crucial role and
where Catalonia already has a scientific, technologi-
cal and entrepreneurial basis providing relevant op-
portunities to successfully take them on. This
document is completed with a picture identifying
priority industries or areas in different countries and
regions of the world, from Germany to Spain and
the Basque Country and on to Australia.
The next block is a first approach to six of the
twenty metaindustries where more opportunities
are detected to focus R&D&I efforts on. These are
city and space management (by Diego Guri
from ACC1Ó), cultural and audiovisual products 
(San tiago Miralles from CCRTV), emotion and
Future opportunities for the Catalan economy6
Executive summary
Scenarios, areas and opportunities
for the Catalan economy
ENRIC LLARCH
006-009_02_ANG.qxp:Prova 2  30/11/09  12:48  Página 6
 experience consumption (Salvador Anton from
 Rovira i Virgili University and member of the
Paradigmes Publishing Council), new materials
(Xavier Gil from the Polytechnic University of Cat-
alonia), ecoprocesses (José M. Baldasano Recio
from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia) and
advanced production systems (Myriam García-
Berro from ASCAMM).
The choice of these metaindustries has been made
as they are activities that had been so far hardly
dealt with in previous Paradigmes issues and there
are few conceptual approaches to them in our
country, especially from a perspective of future
economic opportunities. This poses an additional
difficulty in dealing with its contents following an
additional interest due to the newly adopted focus.
We have intended to cover four basic issues with
the articles on metaindustries:
a)  Conceptual approach to each of the six metain-
dustries.
b)  Foreseeable trends in global demand of goods or
services in the metaindustry by which we can talk of
an emerging or future area. 
c)  Exploration of the situation of this area in our
country: leading companies or companies that can
easily migrate there, degree of internationalisation
and participation in projects abroad, specific research
centres, researchers and academicians working in
these areas.
d)  Identification of strategies and public, private
and mixed policies to be implemented in order to
reach success for that opportunity.
The third block of the monograph deals with
transversal policies to improve the competitive-
ness of the Catalan economy. The interviews with
Vijay Govindarajan from the Tuck School of Busi-
ness of the Dartmouth College by Mar Jiménez
and with Eric Maskin from Princeton University
by Andrea Venturini deal with innovation. The
former recommends Europe to concentrate its
 efforts on four or five sectors. The winner of the
2007 Nobel Prize of Economy in his turn alerts
that the patent system affects innovation negatively
and imitations with a good creative component
are also good for industrialised countries.
The contributions by Salvador Alemany from
Abertis and the Cercle d’Economia as well as by
Salvador Cardús from the Autonomous Univer-
sity of Barcelona tackle the issue of leadership.
The former asserts that entrepreneurs need to be
more committed with the collective project, with
the country, and this has to be done not only out
of patriotism, which would be a valid argument
for many, but out of need. Cardús in his turn
states that values given to economic behaviours
have for long not been the result of principles
but of outright interests accordingly disguised as
moral values. He claims a leadership network at
different scale acting with relatively autonomous
criteria yet along a common direction.
This block devoted to transversal policies closes
with an article by Joan B. Casas taking up an ap-
proach that seemed to have fallen in oblivion in
 recent times, that of the regional economy and the
use of the true space in economic analysis. In this
respect, Casas claims the potentialities for the Catalan
economy offered by strengthening the Mediterranean
7paradigmes /  Issue no. 3 / December 2009
s
Metaindustries are to be understood as the
convergence of activities or segments of activities from
different traditional industries replacing the similitude
of the end product or service as the common
denominator by new common production processes or
to serve new sorts of demand.
006-009_02_ANG.qxp:Prova 2  30/11/09  12:48  Página 7
corridor, understood as a nodal region defined out
of functional interdependence and the density of
flows between its components.
The last block of the monograph analyses a set of
significant companies with successful business
models. As Jordi Cartanyà puts it, technology can
be easily copied, but it is much more difficult to do
with the business model. First, Isidre Fainé, chair-
man of Caixa de Pensions savings bank, explains
us that the success of his institution is based on
proximity, personal care adapted to the customer
and new technologies, with very prudent risk poli-
cies. The Ficosa case is also analysed based on an
interview with its president, Josep Maria Pujol, by
Núria Peláez. Innovation, involvement of the hu-
man team and an ambitious internationalisation
policy based on a good choice of foreign partners
have made Ficosa the leading Catalan company in
automotive components.
Modest Guinjoan, from Barcelona Economia and
member of the Paradigmes Publishing council,
analyses two success models in the agrofood in-
dustry. On the one hand, there is the Costers del
Siurana winery in the Priorat region, where accord-
ing to the author, traditional values of Catalan
business-making such as seriousness in all aspects
of the company, solidity of its positions in a target
market (the top quality one) and much work still
prove to be valid to achieve excellence. The other
case study is that of Agromillora Catalana, working
in coppicing fruit trees, vine and olive trees.
To close this block, Pere Lleonart from Gabinet
d’Estudis Econòmics and Víctor Fabregat from
CITYC analyse the shift in the business model in
fashion textile based on cases like Inditex, Mango,
Desigual, Sita Murt and Ponovias. Vertical integra-
tion in the branch with exclusive sales points from
where first-hand information on the change in cus-
tomer taste is obtained, immediate reaction to this
demand, relocation in far regions according to the
immediacy with which to react to such shift in de-
mand and highly sophisticated logistics are some
key aspects in transforming this business and the
success of most of its companies.
The monograph finishes with interviews with the
eleven entrepreneurs who are members of the
Paradigmes Publishing Council. They are Josep
 Campeny (Termes Orion), Xavier Cardona (Prys-
mian Cables y Sistemas SL), Joan Font (Bon Preu),
Carles Kinder (GTD), Josep Mateu (RACC and
FemCAT), Josep Morell (Jem), Artemi Nolla (AN
Grup), Josep M. Pujol (Grup Pujol), Ramon Roca
(Ros Roca), Ramon Térmens (Taurus) and  Salvador
Tous (Tous). The interviews are based on a com-
mon questionnaire related with the impact of the
crisis in their company and industry, measures
adopted to counteract it and proposals for eco-
nomic policy to be implemented by public authori-
ties. Not all have suffered the economic situation
in the same way, but most agree that the worst is
over. Despite the diversity of proposals to come out
of the crisis, there is general agreement on the di-
agnose: a planned strategy with long-term goals is
needed, spearheaded by public authorities and en-
compassing companies and citizens to work along
one same direction.
This Paradigmes issue finishes with two noteworthy
articles in the Miscellany section. On the one
hand, Antoni Soy, Secretary of Industry at the
Future opportunities for the Catalan economy8
006-009_02_ANG.qxp:Prova 2  30/11/09  12:48  Página 8
DIUE, analyses the new industry, which also in-
cludes outsourced service activities or those sup-
plying basically traditional industrial activity.
Therefore an industrial policy is made based on
fostering talent, creativity and knowledge; fostering
internationalisation and promotion of own multi-
nationals; enhancing entrepreneurship and an op-
timal entrepreneurial setting to be competitive;
progress in cooperation and strategic partnerships
between companies; bureaucratic simplification
and improvement of the logistic and infrastructure
setting for companies.
On the other side, Alfons Garcia from the DIUE
makes an approach to Catalonia’s fiscal balance
with Spain after the financial deployment of the
Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia. After a meticu-
lous and detailed methodological approach, the au-
thor concludes that the reduction of the fiscal
deficit, calculated according to the monetary flow
criterion, will oscillate between 24% and 30%. This
way, the fiscal deficit would be reduced from around
10% of GDP to a range between 5.3% and 7.2%.
Finally, the digital edition of this new Paradigmes
issue not only includes the multimedia items but
also additional contents such as an interview with
Rosabeth Moss Canter from Harvard Business
School, who believes that Europe needs a change
of mindset and much more innovation. 
It also includes a panel discussion on the economy
of identity held on the last edition of the Catalan
Summer University in Prada de Conflent. On its
opening by the Honourable Josep Huguet i Biosca,
it was reminded that according to the World
Tourism Organization, sustainable tourism is «the
one contributing to fully develop the territory and
promoting its identity». 
The panel members are Rubén Lois González
(University of Santiago), Oriol Junqueras
(Autono mous University of Barcelona), Artur Duart
(Interpreta Cultura), Xavier Nadal (PimeCava),
Pep Palau (Pep Palau Von Arendt & Associats),
Jordi Tresserras (University of Barcelona) and
Josep Chias (Chias Marketing).
9paradigmes /  Issue no. 3 / December 2009
ENRIC LLARCH
Director
Among the eleven entrepreneurs who are members of the
Paradigmes Publishing Council, not all have suffered the
economic situation in the same way, but most agree that the
worst is over. Despite the diversity of proposals to come out of
the crisis, there is general agreement on the diagnose: a
planned strategy with long-term goals is needed, spearheaded
by public authorities and encompassing companies and citizens
to work along one same direction.
006-009_02_ANG.qxp:Prova 2  30/11/09  12:49  Página 9


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