The subject of the conference is the relationship between innovation, competitiveness and new technologies in regional development, bases on the analysis and data available to us in international experience. I will also try to compare this with my recent experience in Spain and Catalonia.

Although I will not specifically speak of Navarre, I am aware that I am in a region that has a quite extraordinary track record in development and social cohesion over the last twenty years. Within this framework, some of my reflections based on a series of studies and empirical references may be of interest.
I will try and structure my material within the limited time available to me, and I would like to present my analysis in fourteen points and a conclusion.

1):the wealth of nations and regions depends on their competitive capacity, based on the increase of productivity generated by their companies.

2):productivity is generated in the company, but the activity of the company depends on its regional economic environment and the connection networks in the surrounding local environment.

3): the technological capability of a company is essential, as we know, to produce in a globalised information economy.

4): the most importance source of productivity is innovation. It is not the technology, the technology is the support.

5): there are no innovative sectors, rather innovative process in all sectors.

6): an entrepreneurial spirit is the source of innovation, and innovation is the source of productivity.

7): the financing of this entrepreneurial spirit is at the heart of innovation.

8): on the basis of entrepreneurial factors that I have mentioned, entrepreneurial spirit should not just be seen in terms of new projects, start-ups, new companies.

9): in most of the precepts I have just referred to, which are seen from an overall global perspective, Spain as a whole is badly situated in empirical terms, maybe even very badly.

10): SMEs are the most dynamic in terms of job creation, etc. but they do not have critical mass

11): ): financing remains a key factor, and here the role of the cajas (savings banks) is crucial.

12): the restructuring of development strategy is a very specific undertaking and it depends on the specific conditions in each territory. It is difficult to carry out, especially from the European Commission, which is the worst bureaucracy in the world.

13): an endogenous process of regional development like the one I have just described is more efficient when it is based on a strong regional identity that gives people reasons for producing or living in that region.

14): Getting out of the protection of Europe now means that European funds have dried up. This is very serious development, it means that endogenous assets have to be activated together with mechanisms that drive this regional and national development from within, in the context of a globalisation where one has to become international.