Spain faces a decisive decade to define its position in a context marked by accelerating technology, reindustrialization, and growing international competition. After three decades representing Spain’s Technological Centers (TCs), the Spanish Federation of Technological Centers (Fedit) believes the country today possesses greater scientific and technological capabilities than ever before, but still must tackle a crucial challenge: ensuring that a larger number of companies adopt innovation systematically and are capable of turning knowledge into economic growth, competitiveness, and employment.
The Technological Centers have consolidated their role as one of the main engines of applied innovation in Spain. According to the report produced for Fedit’s 30th anniversary, their activity generates more than €7.7 billion of GDP, sustains 127,000 jobs, and provides innovation services to more than 30,000 companies nationwide. However, for the Federation, these results do not represent a destination but rather the start of a new phase.
“We are probably at the best moment to position Technological Centers within Spain’s innovation ecosystem, but there is still a long road ahead. The real challenge is to ensure that knowledge reaches more companies, reaches the market, and delivers a real impact on society,” said Áureo Díaz-Carrasco, CEO of Fedit.
The Big Challenge: More Firms Innovating
For Fedit, one of the main weaknesses of Spain’s innovation system remains the relatively small number of companies that incorporate innovation as a strategic growth tool. Spain has top-tier knowledge, talent, and technological infrastructure, but needs a business fabric with greater capacity to absorb that knowledge, take risks, and turn it into new products, processes, and business models.
This reality affects especially small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), where size, resource availability, and the uncertainty associated with innovation make it harder to launch technological projects.
“We can generate a lot of knowledge and develop numerous technologies, but if there are no companies able to turn them into market-ready solutions, their impact will be limited. Spain needs more innovative, more competitive companies with greater appetite for risk,” explains Díaz-Carrasco.
The impact report prepared by Fedit shows precisely that companies that collaborate with the TCs innovate more, grow faster, display stronger finances, and improve their competitiveness. The challenge for the next decade will be to extend this model to many more companies and ensure that innovation becomes part of the standard strategy of Spain’s business fabric.
Three Priorities for the Next Decade
From this diagnosis, Fedit outlines three major priorities for the next ten years.
- The creation of a structural and competitive funding program for Technological Centers, based on indicators and medium- to long-term results. The goal is to move beyond a model sustained solely by short-term projects and to enable centers to plan the development of capabilities, talent, and strategic infrastructures with a five- to ten-year horizon.
This kind of support already exists for other players in Spain’s scientific system through programs such as Severo Ochoa and María de Maeztu, but Technological Centers currently cannot access them. For Fedit, the achievements of recent years justify recognizing them as a structural component of the innovation system. - Advancing toward a true national network of Technological Centers, capable of jointly participating in major public and private initiatives. Fedit currently brings together 60 centers, but legal and operational constraints make it difficult for them to present as a network for certain programs or innovative public procurement instruments.
- Reviewing public R&D&I policies so that they are long-term stable, that they better account for their impact on companies, and help mobilize greater private investment. It will be key to move toward improved measurement and accountability for the real impact of public funds invested in research organizations, both public and private.
