Visualizing an entrepreneurial ecosystem: #TakeUp2014

As a co-planner and co-designer of some of the start-up incubators of my city, I was proud to be part on May, 15th 2014 of a double session program during the Takeup2014 event.

In the morning, I conducted an impressing roundtable with the main actors of our local entrepreneurial ecosystem: Nacho Torre from Ibercaja (the main local bank), José Carlos Arnal from Zaragoza City of Knowledge Foundation (our long time partner for start-up acceleration programs), Carlos Piñeyroa from Init Services (a succesful nation-wide provider of start-up incubation services), Sergio López from Hiberus Tecnologia (our main regional ICT company), Saúl Pérez from Millenium 3 and, last but not least, Ivan Herrero, a young hard-working entrepreneur.

In front of an audience composed mainly of young students sparkling with ideas, I was accurate when I presented the members of the roundtable as the tools that the city offers for those students to build their projects (dreams?) with. Viewed from a computer’s architect angle, the city provides the hardware of the machine, while our innovation partners form the different pieces of software that make it run. Financing is the energy fueling the whole system so that, you, young and brave student may make it work, surely in new, unexpected ways.

In the evening, as part of the jury, I could witness and, along with the rest of the jury, help to tune 10 terrific, ambitious ideas in the fields of Smart City, Arts and Technology, Health, Education and Energy. The team that developed “TimeLife”, a service aimed to optimize medical attention logistics, was awarded with five 6-month seats in our “Birdy – Learning to fly” students program. We wish them the best of luck!!