The main European capitals have become, in just a few years, the most important Smart cities worldwide. Spain has Barcelona in the top 10 of innovative European cities and in which there are more facilities to develop technological projects, according to the report. Ten Tech Hubs of the Belgian consulting firm Science/Business. This report has investigated, among other variables, the investment in R&D, the research personnel and the attraction of public resources. As a result, we obtain a very interesting list, in which Barcelona appears in fourth place. The other cities mentioned in the study are Copenhagen, Stockholm, Munich, Berlin, London, Rotterdam, Côte d'Azur, Dublin, and Tallinn.
What are the main characteristics of innovation capitals?
The five leading technology cities in Europe are Copenhagen, Stockholm, Munich, Berlin and London. All of them stand out for having an R&D investment per inhabitant of more than 800 euros (in some cases, such as Copenhagen and Stockholm, it exceeds 2000 euros), more than 2.5% of the active population is working in R&D jobs and many of them attract public resources (from the EU) of more than 100 million euros per year.
Moreover, the advantage between them is that each city has specialized in a particular technological field. They are as follows:
- Copenhagen: specializing in innovation linked to renewable energies
- Stockholm: biomedicine and applied health technologies
- Munich: centralized innovation in large innovative companies such as BMW or Siemens
- Berlin: the German capital is ideal in terms of attracting entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, strongly linked to technology.
- Barcelona: biomedicine and ICT are the main technological specialties of the City of Barcelona
Barcelona, in addition to being the only Spanish city on the list, has a number of qualities that stand out from other European capitals. Some of the most important are related to the climate and quality of life, a focus of attraction for the world's top talents, who choose the Catalan capital as the base in which to develop their professional careers. Technology companies are also attracted by Barcelona's qualities, since in addition to offering good tax conditions, finding talent at a relatively low salary is very common. Barcelona has also become a reference in the IoT world thanks to the institutional impulse and the celebration of international congresses such as the IoT World Congress.
Nevertheless, the countries that stand out the most in terms of innovation and technological bets linked to IoT are the Nordic countries and Germany. This is the main conclusion that can be drawn after looking at the statistics, in which Denmark and Sweden stand out by far above the rest of the countries.
You can find more information in the Science/Business Consulting of Brussels