LifeHub BCN, Bayer's new collaborative environment to drive innovation in Barcelona - #BHHMembersInitiatives

LifeHub BCN will open its doors in the second half of the year, joining the Bayer LifeHub network, which is already present in major innovation hotspots around the world. LifeHub BCN seeks to collaborate and be an active part of society to create world-leading and sustainable solutions in health and nutrition. To achieve this goal, LifeHub BCN will focus on two key areas: crop protection and digital agriculture for Horticulture and Digital Therapeutics. According to Bernardo Kanahuati, CEO of Bayer in Spain and Portugal, "we want to create a collaborative environment with key players in the fields of digital therapies and the transformation of agriculture, with the aim of helping to identify and develop viable proposals that can contribute to improve people's lives." LifeHub BCN will enable them to connect with ecosystems formed by research centers, start-ups, universities, innovation centers and customers; identify partners and provide solutions to their customers' needs; and incubate prototypes to test solutions in the market and be able to scale them. With more than 650 m², the new environment seeks on the one hand, to facilitate and foster collaboration among employees as a starting point to reinforce internal transformation and drive innovation. At the same time, it seeks to link the internal team with members of the local innovation ecosystem, so that they can develop, create and collaborate on projects. For this purpose, it will have co-creation areas, meeting spaces and individual work areas. It will be a lively and versatile space, which can be adapted to the needs of each moment, and which will allow to promote and encourage the development of innovative initiatives. Technological innovation collaborations to improve the world we live in LifeHub BCN is already interacting with the local innovation ecosystem and participating in various programmes and initiatives. Two relevant examples are the Barcelona Health Hub and the Collider Programme at Mobile World Capital. By collaborating with these entities, LifeHub BCN is joining the innovation environment to achieve solutions in health and nutrition that can provide an answer to the main challenges we face as a society. Barcelona, a vibrant setting for innovation The geographic location of the new space is no coincidence: Barcelona plays a key role in achieving the company's objectives, as it is a large global technology space and ranks as number 5 among European startup hubs, standing out especially in Southern Europe with more than 1,700 startups operating in an innovative, attractive, and multicultural environment. In this context, the LifeHub BCN project will allow Bayer to operate as a network of improvement and connection with other Bayer innovation centers in the Mediterranean cluster such as Seville and Almeria and will soon become a relevant asset in the Catalan capital. LifeHub BCN aims to become a tool to empower open innovation and digital transformation efforts at Bayer, enabling them to engage in initiatives that go beyond their core business.