In the last 300 years, technology has increased productivity exponentially. In 2020, one hour of work produced 24 times more goods and services than in 1870. The reason is innovation: converting knowledge into solutions through technology. As economist Paul Romer says, the dark matter of growth is ideas.In OECD countries, growth –measured in GDP per capita– was 4% annually from 1950 to 1973, 2% from 1976 to 2007, and 1% from 2010 to 2021. This slowdown may be due to a lack of disruptive and innovative ideas for various reasons: the loss of acceleration in technological growth produced by World War II, the withdrawal of the private sector from basic science, the aging of the scientific workforce, the transformation into a more comfortable and risk-averse society…Juan Antonio Zufiria, former director of IBM, has written an excellent report on the issue, on which this article is based. Zufiria, like Daniel Susskind, is optimistic and believes that it is possible to recover the pace of growth with innovation and technology. Both Zufiria and Susskind believe that technological change must be directed and prioritized. The biggest drawback to achieving this is the decoupling of capital and labor incomes: lower growth in labor incomes in developed nations – the EU and the USA – has led to increased inequality, measured by the Gini index. It is in these societies that innovation and technology are concentrated, and internal inequality is a brake on the improvement of their productivity. There is a relationship between efficiency and inequality.In the 20th century, production was linked to a workforce. When General Motors had a stock market capitalization of $300,000M, it had 300,000 employees. Today, Google or Microsoft, with double the capitalization, have 30,000. The workforce has lost power entrepreneurially and only maintains it as "quality", with few highly qualified workers. The battle between capital and labor that the Industrial Revolution brought – and that Marxism theorized based on Hegel's principle of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis – does not exist today: it is beginning to be testimonial, except in public service. At the same time, the ability of companies to outsource activities has contributed to increasing the decoupling between labor and capital.The equality between poor and rich countries has increased thanks to globalization. Absolute equality reduces economic efficiency, but inequality above a Gini index of 0.4-0.5 also does, and this is what will end up happening within developed countries if the current trend is not corrected. Ten people currently concentrate 0.52% of world wealth.Development occurs in the world, and the world has limited resources. Economic growth is entropic, meaning it reduces the quality of energy in a way that the second law of thermodynamics makes irreversible: burning wood and running train machinery makes it impossible to return to the origin and recover the burnt wood. Fundamentally, this reality can be synthesized into the warming of the world and the progressive destruction of its reserves.

When researching, one of the most complicated steps is the industrial production of what has been validated in the laboratory. start-up Dan*na has reached this stage after a year of proving its feasibility. "In the lab, everything goes well; the challenge comes when you increase the volume because it must be technically and economically viable," summarizes the company's co-founder and CEO, Xavier Marin. Based in the Barcelona Science Park (PCB), the startup will begin producing bioplastic in large quantities, a more sustainable alternative to conventional plastics such as polypropylene or polyethylene.

The biotechnology pharmaceutical company Hipra officially opened its new campus in Aiguaviva (Gironès) this Thursday, which aims to become one of the main hubs in animal and human health research and development in Europe. The complex has an investment of €500 million and occupies a total area of 114,000 m2, of which only 28,000 m2 have been occupied so far, the first phase. The institutional event was attended by the Minister of Industry, Jordi Hereu, and the President of the Generalitat (Catalan Government), Salvador Illa.

The investment fund Ysios Capital has closed a purchase agreement with the Swiss multinational CSL for a maximum price of 2.2 billion dollars (about 1.862 billion euros) for its start-up VarmX, the fund reported in a statement on Tuesday.

SpliceBio has become the biotechnology company that has raised the most money in the history of the sector in Spain. From its laboratories in the Barcelona Science Park (PCB), the Catalan company has raised €119 million. in a financing round which will be used to validate the gene therapy he has developed for a rare disease that causes blindness. More than ten years ago, the company was born from the research conducted by Miquel Vila-Perelló and Silvia Frutos in the United States, under the leadership of Professor Tom Muir, a pioneer in protein modification that allows them to attack Stargardt disease. With a workforce of more than 40 employees, the company grew alongside the local biotechnology sector, which set another investment record this first half of the year with €227 million, according to data from Biocat.

The pandemic boosted investment in the healthcare sector, achieving unprecedented levels, but Catalan companies are struggling to attract local investors. Catalan funds disbursed €158 million in 2024, but only allocated 19% of this to Catalonia, according to a report prepared by Catalonia.Health and EY. This represents approximately €30 million. This proportion has also been declining in recent years, compared to 30% in 2023 and 51% in 2022.