Project type                                                             Promoting Economic activity

Promoter                                                                  Barcelona Municipality and Barcelona Activa

Start date                                                                 1986/1987

Website                                                                    www.empreses.barcelonactiva.cat

Barcelona Activa offers special services to companies and start-ups, with the aim of helping them grow and therefore support the general economic development of the city. It offers training and special business programs.

The economic and productive activity of Barcelona focuses on giving an opportunity to strategic sectors, such as Digital Economy, Creative and Cultural Industries, Health and Quality of life, Green economy and Sustainability, Production, Tourism and Commerce.

With this aim, Barcelona Activa has promoted so called incubators, which are a set of offices with the most advanced infrastructure and services, which objective is supporting innovative business projects in their creation and growth processes. An incubator provides users with logistical, administrative and value added services, like facilitate access to financing and internationalization, and promotes networking and synergies among hosted businesses.

The incubators strategy include different buildings and programs, dedicated to specific branches of production and innovation: Glòries incubator, Almogàvers Business Factory (which includes a coworking space), ESA BIC Barcelona, Media-TIC Incubator, Canòdrom creative park incubator, and m-startup-barcelona. Other projects and spaces are underway.

• Promoting entrepreneurship
• Innovation and creativity
• Public engagement
• 228 companies launched in 2016
• 20 projects during 2016

• Glòries incubator was set up in 1986/1987 and is the older one. This building has 3.700 m2 surface, with offices from 18 m2 to 110 m2. There are meeting rooms, an auditorium, classrooms, a bar and a leisure room. The start-up companies can stay a maximum of 3 years. In 2016, 82 companies were operating in this premises, with 208 partners (41 women). Since 1986, more than 800 companies have been settled and promoted from this incubator.
• Almogàvers Business Factory is an incubator mostly dedicated to public-private companies spin-offs. It includes a 14 places of co-working space.
• ESA BIC Barcelona is dedicated to spatial and aerial technologies. In 2016 was lodging 23 start-up companies, with 66 partners (11 women).
• Media Tic Incubator, dedicated to TIC start-ups, Canòdrom creative park incubator dedicated to creatives industries. Besides this incubators, m-startup-barcelona program is a start-up accelerator.