Collaboration of different stakeholders in Spain

By: Nina Hoppmann
Created: 31 March 2020 - 04:03
Updated: 31 March 2020 - 04:03

Fighting the coronavirus requires innovative ideas, quick responses and numerous helping hands. Therefore, people are working on multiple levels: local, regional, national, European. And they come from different entities: industry, academia, government – and society. All are important and serve different purposes.

Spain is a good example of collaboration on all these levels. Due to the high number of infected people, hospitals need to be provided with enough protective masks and respirators. Many volunteers have offered to 3D-print the needed products or to contribute with material, designs or machinery:

  • Individuals via the makers community, which has created networks in all the Spanish autonomous communities and channels their activities through a handful of representatives.
  • Companies, with the coordination at first level of their regional clusters, and ultimately of the Spanish Federation of Clusters, which channels all resources in a “capacities map” that is shared with the responsible national and regional ministries.
  • Universities via either the makers community, clusters or directly via public authorities.

To achieve a quadruple helix of collaboration (industry, academia, government and society) and to ensure the operability of the networks, representatives of these different entities have reached out to each other and created a forum of volunteers on a high level. They established a conference call daily. From their respective perspectives, they

  • exchange information on current demand and supply,
  • discuss unsolved issues about design, material, distribution and funding,
  • share ideas of matching the demand with the offers,
  • and align the bottom-up initiatives with the routes of action of the national government and the European Union. 

Have you established similar structures in your countries?