In the presentation of the fifth edition of the awards, Pedro Fontana, president of the Fundació Cercle d'Economia, emphasised the figure of José Manuel Lara, of whom he highlighted his "legacy" in the form of a "business career full of ambition and purpose" and which, based on a "long-term vision", led him to "lead and participate in numerous business initiatives that contributed, and they continue to do so, to shared progress."
Fontana referred to the two award-winning companies: "Bmat is an example that shows that we are fully competitive in the digital world" and "Hoff is as a sign that there is room for innovation in a sector as traditional as footwear". "The reality of these two companies shows that it is possible to improve our competitiveness," he said, before giving way to the session.
Jordi Valls, fourth deputy mayor for Economy, Finance, Economic Promotion and Tourism of the Barcelona City Council, referred to the innovation and start-up ecosystem of the Catalan capital. He admitted – as a weak point of Barcelona, but also of Catalonia and Spain as a whole – the way forward in terms of technology transfer, that is, the "need to turn knowledge into a positive economic activity", while praising Barcelona's strength in the field of research.
And picking up on the idea of business purpose, as well as the awards of the Fundació Cercle d'Economia, he advocated measuring it to know the impact it can have on improving the climate crisis and from a social point of view.
For his part, Jordi Hereu, Minister of Industry and Tourism, evoked the figure of José Manuel Lara: "He was always a committed person and I also want to highlight his courage and civic commitment to this country". As a representative of the public political sphere, he endorsed the agenda of "boosting productivity and well-being in a changing world". And he specified some areas or initiatives on which to have an impact: "infrastructures, education, generation of more physical capital and training to have better human capital".
From the point of view of government management, he vindicated the "efforts" that the Spanish executive has been developing in "active industrial policy and tourism". At the same time, he assured that "we will allocate many European funds to the objective of transforming our productive fabric to gain in productivity, which means guaranteeing prosperity in the coming years and decades".
Preserving the Rights of Music Creators Through Innovation
Àlex Loscos, CRO of Bmat, received the award from Jordi Hereu. Loscos recalled his passion for music from a very young age and his professional beginnings where, in contact with a group of engineers who shared the same hobby, they realized that "the world of copyright was a complex and archaic world".
Grateful for an award that "we did not expect", he emphasised the mission assumed in the genesis and conception of the business project: "that each artist receives what they deserve and, with this will, we are building an equitable, transparent and technologically very efficient platform".
The minister's sneakers
Fran Marchena, CEO and founder of Hoff, received the award from Jordi Valls. Surprised by the comment made by Minister Hereu during the session, in the sense that there is a minister of the Spanish Government who wears the shoes that Marchena's company manufactures in Elche (Alicante), he explained that in less than six years they have reached more than 50 markets and that they have stores in 14 countries.
He stated that "without a clear purpose, without a path or direction to go" companies cannot achieve their goals. Without forgetting, in his opinion, the importance of ambition and, in Hoff's particular case, differentiation, that is, "doing things differently".
