Transfer Story: Mataro Spain

MATARO TRANSFER STORY

December 2020

Original Ambition:

The city of Mataro aspires to open the city to the sea.  The Municipality’s original goals were to promote the blue economy and stimulate new businesses. The foundations for this project were laid in the ‘Sea in Value’ project, which sought to promote a nautical culture, develop the blue economy and open the city to the sea.

The original timetable planned for Mataro’s competition was as follows;

• Competition Preparation:  Jan 2019 – Jun 2019
• Competition Launch: Jul 2019
• Competition Close: Oct 2019
• Competition Delivery:   Jan 2019 – Nov 2019
• Demo Day/Award Ceremony: Dec 2019
• Incubation: Nov 2019 – Dec 2020

The original goals set out in the Transfer Plan were to;

• Obtain the participation of 5 start-ups / projects in the 1st edition of the Bluact Awards
• Create an incubator around the Blue Economy from the awards and provide access to 2-3 companies by 2020
• Obtain the participation and involvement in the ULG (Urbact Local Group) 12 enterprises, entities and associations of the sector.
• Creation of a permanent work group (from the ULG) to promote the blue economy in the city, formed by at least 10 entities and local companies. 
• Creation of 4 start-ups of local entrepreneurship based on the blue economy and 12 new jobs.
• To carry out 70 hours of mentoring and specialized advice. 
• Consolidate the BluAct Awards in Mataró and become a benchmark in Catalonia.
• Endow economically those innovative initiatives that have a blue component and are developed in Mataró.

Transfer Journey Highlights

Transfer Journey highlights achieved by Mataro, include;

• Transfer Plan (March 19) and 3 improvements - bases’ reschedule (July 19), budged (September 19), Covid reschedule (March 20)
• 5 ULG Meetings (February, April, May, July and October 19) all of them as organizers
• Bases' awards (July – October 19)
• Sponsorship (September 19 – February 20): Mataró Port + Barcelona Province Government
• Design - Contents, Image, Web (July – November 19)
• Communication: online campaign, e-mailings (October 19 – January 20)
• Membership of the Barcelona Nautical Cluster (October 19)
• Workshop about Blue Economy Opportunities in TecnoCampus (November 19)
• Presentation of Applications (November 19 – January 20)
• Management Projects (November 19 – January 20)
• Jury: Demo Day (March 20)
• Organization Bluact Awards (June 20)
• Mentoring program / Incubation (July 20 – February 21)

Successes achieved by Mataro:

The team started by building a strong Urbact Local Group (ULG) with members coming from some of the key partners involved in promoting blue growth, innovation and entrepreneurship in the region. This ULG with 4 helix members (Public Administration, Education, Associations and citizen, and Private Sector) included representatives from:

• Barcelona Nautic Cluster – a regional marine and maritime business cluster;
• The Port of Mataro – the local port;
• Tecnocampus – a university linked innovation/incubation provider with a strong reputation for business start-ups;
• Barcelona Province Government  (International Relationships Area) – with a large experience in supporting European projects

This partnership gave them a strong foundation on which to build, with a strong incubation partner; a strong marine and maritime cluster; and an active port authority.  

The original plan was to open the competition in Mataro between Jun 2019 and March 2020. Their partnership with a strong University linked incubator, Tecnocampus, was a particular feature of their competition, together with the sponsorship prize money they secured from the Port of Mataro and the close co-operation of Barcelona Nautic Cluster, who offered to promote the competition to the Marine & Maritime sector.

Originally, the Municipality had planned to integrate their own award programme into a high-profile entrepreneurship awards programme that is held annually in the city – the Cre@tic Awards. However, this became increasingly difficult as their programme experienced slippage and the Municipality had to reconfigure its plans, due to the fact that the deadlines of each phase of the two awards could not coincide.

In the end, applications to the Cre@tic Awards ended up feeding the BluAct Blue Growth Entrepreneurship competition (rather than this being a separate category in the Cre@tic Awards). That said, by the time the competition closed, the city had received 7 high quality applications for their Blue Growth Entrepreneurship Programme, with a Demo Day held in March 2020 selecting the top 3 winners.

A professionally organised award ceremony took place in the 3rd week of June, with mentoring and incubation starting in July 2020 and running to March/April 2021.  Winners of the competition included;

Prizes offered to the winners of the competition included;

1^st classified

• Cash prize of four thousand euros (€4,000) (donated by Mataró’s Port Consortium)
• Mentoring programme and business accelerator programme valued at €1,000 (donated by TecnoCampus)
• BluAct coworking at TecnoCampus (payable by Mataró City Council)
• Support in the promotion and presence in media (payable by Mataró City Council).

2^nd and 3^rd classified

• Mentoring programme and business accelerator programme valued at €1,000 (donated by TecnoCampus)
• BluAct coworking at TecnoCampus (payable by Mataró City Council)
• Support in the promotion and presence in media (payable by Mataró City Council).

Challenges Mataro experienced:

The Municipality of Mataro had some challenges along the way including the fact that some expenses (cash prizes and incubator rental) were classed as ineligible; slow administrative and internal legal procedures; and difficulties in obtaining private financing. This meant they had to reconsider the initial calendar of the project and develop a new approach to the format of the event, outside the framework of the Cre@ticAwards.

In addition, in common with Salerno, because the municipality has partnered with quite a ‘commercial’ incubation provider, it found itself in a situation where their incubation programme was best suited to businesses that were ‘investment ready’, running the risk of more ‘early stage’ ideas struggling to find the support they need to progress into business.

As it was, this did not present too much of a problem for the city, as the eventual ideas submitted were well formed, but it may raise a question for future years, should the city progress with the competition as an annual event and want to support a broader range of aspiring entrepreneurs and organize more events (Hackathons, Workshop) focused on the generation of new ideas and projects in the seed phase. 

Results achieved by Mataro

At the time of writing, the city of Mataro has delivered;

• 1 Transfer Plan, with 3 improvements
• 1 Urbact Local Group established, with 28 members
• €9,000 of sponsorship secured (of which €6,000 was cash contributions)
• 7 business proposals/ideas generated
• 3 events organised, with 90 attendees in total
• 3 businesses incubated and in the mentoring process

Next Steps

Plans are being developed to maintain the blue growth competition next year. The city has built a strong foundation programme on which to build next year.