Marc Torrens, PhD

Yesterday, I participated in the Jornada “Els Errors dels Emprenedors” organized by the Parc de Recerca de la UAB which consisted in few talks about entrepreneurship and its most common mistakes.

The session started with an introduction and a warm welcome by Júlia Palma from the Parc de Recerca de la UAB. Then, Prof. Ramón Lopez de Mántaras gave an introduction about the Artificial Intelligence Research Insititue and its main activities. It is interesting to see all the different topics they are covering from AI. Basically they are focusing in three main areas: 1) Learning Systems, 2) Multiagent Systems, and 3) Reasoning and Logic.

The second speaker was Enrique Puig from SECOD. He gave a very interesting talk about the common mistakes young companies easily do. I am very happy to have learnt about SECOD which is an organization of senior and retired professionals that want to be active by helping early stage companies. This group of more than 100 senior professionals are volunteers to give all kind of advices and solutions for free, just for the fun to be involved with the industry and the business world. They are high level profiles, usually executives and managers from all kind of sectors and type of companies. Very interesting concept!

I was talking about Strands (a spin-off out of IIIA) and the experience of starting a company from our perspective. You can take a look at the slides above.

Finally, Joaquim Querol from Endor Nanotechnologies explained their experience in founding a company about nanotechnology. It is motivating to see other people creating successful and interesting companies in Barcelona, and nanotechnology is so cool!