The Innovalia Group held the Innovalia Week from July 13th to 17th, a virtual event over a week where the Innovalia Group opened its doors to present solutions, tools and methodologies that are developed and marketed in the group and that are key to overcome the current challenges of the industry.
During the Innovalia Week, the group offered a daily webinar related to the Innovalia Group’s work areas. Innovative software tools and methodologies were presented to successfully work in the current scenario. However, on July 17th, the Innovalia Week concluded with the celebration of the Innovalia 2020 Convention, where the representatives of the 8 companies of the Innovalia Group, accompanied by the main representatives of the Basque Industry and more than 200 tele-attendees, reviewed the challenges they are facing and shared the main milestones of the year, maintaining the convention format but this time on digital.
The first intervention of the Convention was given by the president of the Innovalia Group, Jesús de la Maza, who talked about the global situation as a great opportunity for the Group. “The technology we generate is nourished by the collaboration between the group companies by sharing experiences, know-how and market knowledge.” Jesús de la Maza commented while sharing positive and motivating news for the Basque group. “Each of the Group companies has been affected by the pandemic in a different way, but I can announce that the group’s global turnover has only been affected by a 20%, that we have maintained all the jobs and hope to recover the numbers at the end of the year”. In the same way, Jesús de la Maza took the opportunity to ask for collaboration between organizations and companies, defending the Group’s motivation to continue being an example of technological commitment and innovative character.
Then Jesús de la Maza started a debate with the Minister of Economic Development and Infrastructure of the Basque Country, Arantxa Tapia, with an inspiring speech on the situation, the main keys to lead the future towards a successful Industry and the role of SMEs and innovation to achieve it. Both Jesús de la Maza and Arantxa Tapia agreed that we are living in a situation that demands a lot of attention, but the urgent should not make us forget how important it is to keep the acceleration of industrial digitization, so that digital becomes something characteristic on the Basque Country companies. Both participants agreed that the work must be continued so that the demand for an industrial product serves as protection for the industrial product of high technological value that we develop in the Basque Country.
“The industry has to be competitive; it has to be digital and modern. That is why investment in R&D is key, as is collaboration between organizations or collaboration with other European regions.” Arantxa Tapia commented while Jesús de la Maza agreed on that the effort must continue, working on the optimization of the Industry must not cease and the two participants agreed that the Basque Country has companies of high technological value that are competing with large multinational companies and that it is important to provide them with the necessary support so that they are present in other markets too. “In the Basque Country we are capable of developing great initiatives and doing it with our own technology. Therein lies one of the most important keys to a promising future.” concluded Arantxa Tapia.
During the rest of the day, the representatives from the Innovalia Group, CARSA, Innovalia Association, Redborder, SQS, CBT, Innovalia Metrology, 3D Kumo and Technarte, presented the successes of the last year and the new opportunities, always putting on the table and sharing with the rest of the Group how the activity is being redirected due to the Covid-19.
The day ended with the intervention of a guest of honor, Luis Ignacio Vicente, CIO of Asti Robotics, who shared an interesting presentation on Robotics and Artificial Intelligence in the post-Covid scenario. Luis Ignacio Vicente shared an overview of the panorama, pointing out that the future that he shares is not only in line with Jesús de la Maza, but also with many of the speakers from the Innovalia Group.
“Almost 8 years ago, when I worked in Telefónica we started talking about Industry 4.0. Telefónica was a leader in collaboration in European projects and after a conversation with the CDTI they told us that if we wanted to talk about Industry 4.0 and innovation projects, we had to talk to the Innovalia Group, because they are the benchmark in this field and that’s where my collaboration began.” Luis Ignacio Vicente commented while reviewing his professional career.
The day ended with interesting conclusions from Luis Ignacio Vicente, Silvia de la Maza and Jesús de la Maza. Conclusions that allow us to clear doubts about the commitment to innovation and digitization of SMEs and that undoubtedly lead us to think that this new situation is becoming an opportunity for improvement for many companies, the perfect opportunity to expand fields and to find more optimal ways to develop your business.
Jesús de la Maza and Arantxa Tapia talking about Industry 4.0
Jesús de la Maza and Arantxa Tapia talking about Industry 4.0
Luis Ignacio Vicente during his intervention