Marta Plana explains the Barça Innovation Hub in Israel

On the panel titled: “This Way to the Exit”  ​Marta Plana has told industry experts, entrepreneurs, corporate executives, investors and brands about some of the key features that define BIHUB, the club’s knowledge and innovation platform aimed at creating products and services that benefit not only the club and its athletes but also society in general. In her speech, she emphasised the importance of fostering and connecting an ecosystem around the world of sport: sports organisations, leading companies, research centres, universities, entrepreneurs and start-ups. She particularly highlighted the role of the latter in co-developing products and services in the sports industry. Plana focused especially on FC Barcelona’s role as a hub for attracting start-ups to develop new technology and innovation projects.

This panel, where one of the main threads tackled ways to improve negotiation tactics and fundraising strategies in any company, also featured other technology experts and investors including: Andy Kaye, chairman and institutional director of OurCrowd, Brad Raymond; global investment banking director Steven Glanz; CRO Convizit, Mark Selinger; partner at McDermott Will Emery, and Noam Kaiser; director of Intel Capital.

OurCrowd Global Investors Summit is one of the world’s leading conferences in the sector. This year’s edition of what is now the fastest growing technology conference in the world is being attended by 39,000 industry professionals from 183 different countries and more than 200 companies including Pepsico, Fast Company, Accenture, Telefónica, P&G Ventures.

As well as the “This Way to Exit” panel, Marta Plana also took part yesterday Wednesday in the OurCrowd Leaders Forum in a round table debate on “Scoring big on Sports Club Strategies” together with other industry experts, where she was able to present some of the BIHUB projects.

 The Barça Innovation Hub project

The Barça Innovation Hub has set up an ecosystem to foster knowledge and innovation, in order to benefit the club and society at large. The goal of this collaborative model is for the club to be able to attract companies, research institutions and entrepreneurs to develop new and innovative technologies and thus help to make FC Barcelona a focus for promoting talent, sport, technology and innovation.

As one of the biggest sports laboratories in the world, FC Barcelona is in a unique position to become a world leader in sports and innovation. With more than 2,000 athletes, in 5 professional sports and 9 other amateur sports, the Barça Innovation Hub has access to more than 120 teams. The club also has more than 300 million fans worldwide and welcomes 4.5 million visitors a year to the Camp Nou. Therefore, the club has become an interesting, diverse and comprehensive test bench for projects that include research and development programs, corporate innovation and vocational training.