Enrique Arriaga, First Vice President and Island Councilor for the Roads, Mobility, Innovation and Culture Areas of the Council of Tenerife, reflects in an interview for Impulsa Startups on different aspects related to digital transformation and innovation in the Council, the areas it manages and the economy of Tenerife, assuring that “we need to look for complementary alternatives to the tourism sector. We have suffered during this pandemic: our great dependence on tourism has made us practically have an economic zero. However, if we had had a base of another type of company, globalized, with a technological base, we would not have stopped producing”.
According to the first vice president of the Council of Tenerife, “from the beginning of the legislature we have launched an Innovation Master Plan that seeks to set out the priority lines of the Council of Tenerife to generate that economy in different areas that are the audiovisual area -which has already been working on the entire subject of productions, but we want it to go much further-, the 3D animation area, also associated with the video game sector, the Renewable Energies area and the research area R&D also in all its fields”.
This ambitious project to restructure the economy, for the Minister of Innovation, “is mainly supported by two technical offices and a public company”. On the one hand, “the public company of the Council is the Tenerife Science and Technology Park, which has the mission of helping all those people who want to set up a startup, helping them throughout the process with all the advice, the analysis phases of the business model, business angels to obtain financing for these companies”.
“Then there is locating the companies, the location in this ecosystem, which are the different enclaves of the Technological Science Park. Right now we have four enclaves on the island of Tenerife: Cuevas Blancas, Hogar Gomero, La Laguna and the INfactory space, which is the Dársena Pesquera. And that is a bit of the function of what the Science Park is, accommodation in that ecosystem where all the startups are, ”says Arriaga.
“Training -which was previously only given through the Science Park- we have raised it to a higher level and we have created a program called Talentum, Talento en Tenerife, with the aim of creating talent with our people, and not having to import talent from abroad” affirms Enrique Arriaga.
This search for talent is carried out from a very early age. According to Arriaga, “we start with the creation of innovative scientific vocations in the little ones, for 6 years with different programs that we do with Secondary, Baccalaureate and FP students, and then we also continue with specific training with masters on blockchain, Big Data, 3D animation …. We even got to master programs with the School of Industrial Organization (EOI) as well and we got to specific training programs with the University of La Laguna through what is called Talentum I+D, which is really the promotion of research, in We are doing this case with the Higher Council for Scientific Research, the University of La Laguna, the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands and the Institute of Tropical Diseases as well, these are the four lines of pure research that we have”.
“Then we have a part of specific training, tailored to large technology companies that normally look for qualified personnel, but none of the regulated training gives the answer to what they need. So what we do is we meet with them, we develop a training program in such a way that it goes specifically with their needs. The program is taught by the company itself and what the Council does is finance that training program”.
The latter being something “totally profitable, both for the company and for the island, since in recent years we have had a contracting rate of 98%. Talentum encompasses all phases of talent generation on our island and it is working very well. And I believe that it is the basis for being able to generate trained people to be able to create startups”.
As described by the first vice president of the Tenerife Council, “through this Innovation Master Plan, we have two technical offices that are contracted with an external company. The first office is in charge of taking the companies that we have here and helping them in their internationalization process, helping them to get out, taking them by the hand and helping them in that international market that is sometimes complicated for small companies. And the company that is doing all this is PwC, which is one of the four largest consulting firms in the world, with which it has offices all over the world and knows how to guide us to take our companies outside the innovative sector”.
“But they also have the other mission, which is to attract wealth and attract companies to establish themselves in Tenerife with a very clear program that we all already know: tax benefits, training, accommodation, our climate, our connectivity, legal certainty, etc… And there, the first thing that companies ask before coming here is, do you have trained personnel, do you have talent? And if there is no talent, they don't come. Note that it is no longer even taxation that really makes companies come. There, that is the key point in which we have to influence a lot. Talentum develops the training that companies and startups require”, highlights Arriaga about the importance of training for the island.
“Dual Vocational Training is a great opportunity, and -continues Arriaga- I think it is an important part that this leap has been taken, because we have always said that normally regulated training is the one that goes the slowest, and the one with the most difficulty or it is more difficult for him to adapt to reality, and the good thing about this Dual VT is that everything that may not be included in the curriculum will be learned in the company and that knowledge of real life, I think it is fundamental. That is why we all expect a lot from this dual training in all disciplines and we will see its results shortly”
According to Enrique Arriaga, “a very clear program that we have developed is that of onboarding, that is, when the company arrives, how should it be treated, because until now certain organizations have dedicated themselves to bringing companies and then releasing them here and many times companies get tired, they have problems, there is no one to help them and they leave again. And then the aftercare, which is the care of that company throughout its stage and growth. We have also had companies that had connectivity problems and that precisely because they had not been given that service - which could have been easily solved - have gone abroad and we have had to go again to try to attract them, we are talking, for example, of companies in the very important animation worldwide”.
“Then the other technical office that we have -continues Arriaga- is the one for the search for resources, subsidies and aid both for companies that are going abroad and for the companies that are here. It is an office that now, with all these Next Generation Funds, tells you what kind of aid is available for the activity you are doing, we provide the information, we help you manage it and process it. Therefore, I have just planted the entire map of how we have everything fitted together in the area of ​​innovation together with the area of ​​Socioeconomic Development, with Turismo de Tenerife through the Tenerife Film Commission and then through ITER, of everything that is reference centers of R&D”.
Enrique Arriaga concludes on the area of ​​innovation and research, “that is a bit of the map that we have drawn to make clear what the game board is, so that no piece escapes us, based, as I say, on the creation of spaces, aid, advice through the Science Park, talent training through the Talentum program and, above all, the importance of the phase we are in now, the coordination with the different entities that attract companies such as the Chamber of Commerce , Proexca, Why Tenerife, the Canary Islands Special Zone… and what we are trying to do is coordinate it”.
“We continue to grow in spaces through the new Cuevas Blancas Science Park, the main building is about to be inaugurated and there we have many thousands of square meters to start building buildings and headquarters for many companies, and right now we are in a process of selection of 400 professionals who are going to form part of the Talentum program through a large multinational to create a worldwide reference center here in Tenerife, to provide global services from Tenerife, something similar to what Atos is doing right now, which They are already going for almost 2,000 professionals, ”says the first vice president of the Tenerife Council.
“We are planning a trip to the United States to talk to people from the gaming, audiovisual, and technology sectors. In the end it's all between Los Angeles and San Francisco. It is a very elaborate commercial mission: we clearly identify what the objectives are and we go directly to that company and not cold door commercially, but hot door, that is, and to the headquarters of our consultant here in that country and in that city that probably that company are his clients, because they already talk to him about us, he prepares the meeting, and it is much more fruitful. The Master Plan has been in place for less than a year, but it is already beginning to bear fruit and now we have to continue working along these lines”.
Innovation in culture and mobility
“At the level of digital transformation in the area of ​​culture, we had to incorporate innovation into the sector during the pandemic, because we could practically not give performances, it was very limited and through different applications and companies we were able to open our museums virtually so that the people could enjoy them from home, the TEA (Tenerife Espacio de las Artes). Also using streaming broadcasts, being able to also offer the performances of the symphony, the opera...”, Arriaga points out.
“We also have a program that had to do with innovation and culture, through which a selection was made and artists were brought into a technological environment that was changing every year, and from that environment, they designed a piece or a artwork; it was called the Technarte Residence, a program that was a success” assures the counselor.
Mobility, big data and innovation
Regarding mobility, Enrique Arriaga shares with us that “we are working a lot from the mobility area with Big Data. We buy the data from the telephone company to establish origin-destination matrices and to know what the movement behavior of people on our island is. We started by dividing the island into 8 zones, then we went to 16 and right now we are in 280 zones with which we clearly have how each person moves. That, we pass it to the algorithms of the Big Data department of TITSA. And they recalculate TITSA's frequency and route in such a way that we are doing something that was not done before”.
“Before there were routes and people adapted to the routes that existed and now Titsa, even during the pandemic -which was a very complicated time- what we have done is adapt Titsa to the mobility needs of people, which have also changed. in the face of what it was before and after the pandemic. Normally in the schedules of the bus transport companies there are usually two schedules a year, summer and winter. However, during the pandemic we entered variables of percentage of occupancy and people who used all the restrictions that Health set for us at all times. Therefore, every day we had to recalculate all the routes of Titsa and there was a time when the algorithms were not enough, ”says Arriaga.
For the island's mobility manager, “there have been changes in the way of moving on the island after the pandemic, and we are constantly extracting all this data to see if now, facing winter time, starting in September, we reconfigure a lot of of TITSA's routes, adapting them to real needs. One example is the route to Santa Cruz - Playa de Las Américas, which has seen a 50% increase in the number of users. Before, many people who went to work in the tourism sector went in their car. Today, with fuel prices, it is no longer profitable and that means that the frequency has had to be increased. The same thing with the incorporation of the youth card with a single rate for young people, has meant that all the young people who used to take their car to go to Las Américas to the discos at night, now take the bus because it is free. This has made us increase the frequency also at night and guarantee the safety of our young people who are no longer risking their lives throughout that area.”
“The stops incorporate QR codes in such a way that when you read it they know which stop you are at and it automatically tells you where the buses that are going to arrive at your site are. Everything that is the technologies that the buses themselves carry, from different systems that have to do with people, with adaptation to people with different mobility or vision problems. For example, many of the new buses, when the bus arrives at a stop, there is a loudspeaker that says which route it is, this bus is 110, so a person with reduced visibility knows that it is that bus, with which they get on” .
“All the part that has to do with the sustainability of the fleet, we have already changed practically all our buses in this next contract. Hundreds of buses that are already being manufactured are hybrids and the following contracts will be for electric buses and hydrogen buses. We are also incorporating this new technology, especially hydrogen, which is also the most complicated to include in our fleet, that is, in the case of mobility”, concludes Arriaga.