Fundación LAB Mediterráneo sets out its action after 3 years of its existence

Valencia, 4 September 2023.- Fundación LAB Mediterráneo, a project promoted by the Employers’ Association of Valencia (AVE), presented Live LAB, an informative meeting to make the media aware of all the progress and actions being carried out by the foundation, with the participation of Héctor Dominguis, president of Fundación LAB Mediterráneo and Enrique Soto, director of Fundación LAB Mediterráneo.

The meeting was the new president and director’s first contact with the media and an opportunity to inform on the initiatives currently being carried out, as well as future actions.

Fundación LAB Mediterráneo has set itself the following objectives: (I) foment the creation and attraction of technological startups, (II) encourage technology companies to set up in the Region of Valencia and create a ‘pull effect’, (III) promote support for companies in non-technological sectors of the Region to help speed up their digital transformation and (IV) contribute to helping increase private investment in innovation and R&D&I and V) help promote research.

To reach these objectives, Fundación LAB Mediterráneo is implementing different measures relating to communication, dissemination, knowledge generation and support for existing initiatives in the region of Valencia which are linked to their areas of activity.

In the case of the area of communication, the “#YoSI” movement was created, and connects with the idea of an Unlimited Company (SI) promoted by the foundation. It aims at giving visibility to the talent of the people who promote progress and stand out in any of these four areas. To help advance the movement, in May of this year, we set up a large urn in Valencia, Alicante and Castellon in which citizens could express, with their “vote”, their opinion about the future of the Region of Valencia, and the role to be played, in said future, by entrepreneurship, innovation, technology and research.

The president of Fundación LAB Mediterráneo, Héctor Dominguis, declared, “we open this debate in order to call on political parties to stop thinking in the short term and include in their priorities a medium to long-term vision of the Region by encompassing these four lines of action as strategic”.

With regard to the area of dissemination, several actions are carried out. On the one hand, the outreach sessions, seminars with experts related to the foundation’s four lines of action concerning the following subjects: Startups and large corporations, Open Innovation, Digital transformation, Cybersecurity, Data and Artificial intelligence, Industrial digitalizaiton, Good practices between Spain and Israel, Cryptocurrencies, among others.

On the other hand are the specific measures with groups on which the foundation focuses its activity, such as:

• Researchers: the Connecting Businesspeople and Researchers meeting at which the latter present the lines of research on which they are working and which are of interest to the former, generating opportunities to collaborate on business projects. With an aim to help train the researchers taking part in the meeting, they are offered a  business management course  at EDEM Escuela de Empresarios.
• Students: Challenges with university students, with the main idea that participants put forward innovative solutions to real business problems and get to know the business world.
• Startups: Connecting large corporations and startups, meetings at which large corporations and startups are afforded the opportunity to get to know one another and promote open innovation projects.
• SMEs: Mentoring for SMEs, mentoring seminars, to help overcome the innovation and technology challenges faced by the SMEs in the Region of Valencia. The Mentoring’s second edition will take place on 14 September in Castelló. According to Héctor Dominguis “the objective is to help the SMEs grow because small businesses need to grow so as to be big enough to allow investment in R&D&I. The business-people taking part in the mentoring are given the opportunity to take the SuperPymes course, by EDEM, to help train them by providing them with knowledge in the main areas of business management.

And, lastly, business missions to get to know good practices and obtain learning outcomes from the regions that are a reference in the Foundation’s areas. The next one, Silicon Valley, from 4 to 9 November.

The reports drawn by the Foundation are within the framework of the area of knowledge generation. After publishing two reports on R&D and Innovation, How to foment R&D&I in the Region of Valencia and an in-depth analysis  of Private Investment in R&D&I in the Region of Valencia, this year, a third document has been released, Technology as a growth engine, which analyses the role of technology as a basis for economic and social progress and compares the situation in the Region of Valencia with the most developed countries in Europe and the leading regions in Spain: Region of Madrid, Catalonia and Basque Country. The different documents were drawn up by researchers at the Valencian Institute for Economic Research (Ivie).

We have likewise collaborated with the Miguel Hernández University (UMH) on the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) report, which gives an overview of the current state of entrepreneurial activity in the Region of Valencia.

The last area is support for existing initiatives making us a reference in one or several of the Foundation’s four lines of action, such as Blue Ventures, Club for Innovation in the Region of Valencia (CiCV), RAQRS International Symposium, CTO Summit, FTalks Food Summit, IV International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, The Next Web, Startups Investors Connect (Sabadell Bstartup) and the Valencia Digital Summit, among others.

Fundación LAB Mediterráneo

Fundación LAB Mediterráneo is a project created by AVE with the mission of positioning the Region of Valencia as a national and European benchmark in entrepreneurship, innovation, technology and research.

To achieve this, it has set itself five objectives: to promote the creation and attraction of technology start-ups; to work to attract national and international technology companies to set up in the Region of Valencia and create a ‘tractor effect’; to promote support for companies in non-technological sectors to accelerate their digital transformation; to contribute to increasing private investment in R&D&I; and to help promote research.

The Foundation’s Board of Trustees is made up of the following entities Aceitunas Cazorla, Aquaservice/Plug and Play, AVE, Baleària, Banco Sabadell, Boluda Corporación Marítima, CaixaBank, Dacsa Group, Embutidos Martínez/KMZERO, GDES, Grupo AZA, Grupo Bertolín, Grupo Gimeno, Helados Estiu, Importaco, Lanzadera, Logifruit, Nunsys, Royo/ Invext, S2 Grupo, SPB/Cleanity TIBA/Romeu, Verne Technology Group y Zeus/Sesame.

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