Cooperate to compete

The current economic situation is characterized by a strong and increasing competitiveness in the markets and, under this context, economies such as the Catalan one are exposed to a process of constant and strong changes. The introduction of new economies in the World's macroeconomic scene is reflected in the increase of high-potential competitors which have low production costs and affect open and advanced economies such as the Catalan one.

This context involves important challenges for Catalonia, but it also gives us the great opportunity of carrying out changes in the productive base of our economy and progressing in knowledge economy, research, development, innovation and new technologies.

Research, development and innovation activities are essential to achieve a sustainable improvement in the business competitiveness. That is why increasing the number of innovative enterprises and their number of innovative projects is necessary in order to boost the competitiveness of the Catalan economy, and therefore, it is a primary objective of the Catalan Government's actions.

The innovation capacity of a region depends on the efforts aimed at the creation of new products and processes and on the interaction of different agents, particularly enterprises, public and private research centres, universities and public administrations integrated in the innovation system.

For this reason, from the Ministry of Innovation, Universities and Enterprise of the Government of Catalonia, and specially from the CIDEM, we are working to boost both an increase of the efforts in R+D+I and the relationship between different agents of the innovation system.

The mission of the CIDEM is to boost the innovation of companies as a way to increase their competitiveness.

In order to face up to all these challenges, the CIDEM has developed an Action Plan 2007-2008 organized around three strategic guidelines:

• Promotion of innovation: to increase the innovation capacity of companies offering support to the starting-up of R&D&I projects.
• Boost of the technological market: to boost, generate, increase and transfer an excellent technological offer, by means of managing a systemic model of technological transfer in Catalonia.
• Support to innovative environments: to have specific tools of sectorial and territorial public policy to promote innovation dynamics.

Actions and tools aimed at supporting Catalan companies can be found in the products and services (Catalan version) to boost business innovation.

The CIDEM is organized in 9 departments: 5 vertical departments (Innovation, Technology Transfer, Business Development, Deputy Director and the Catalonia Investment Agency), which carry out the three strategic guidelines, 1 transverse department (Programme Créixer) and 3 internal departments (Planning, Organization and External Relations), which offer support actions to the aforementioned fields.

Click on the organization chart in PDF (Catalan version) for an excellent printing.