The sixth edition of the Barcelona New Economy Week (BNEW), organized by the Consorci de la Zona Franca de Barcelona (CZFB), has opened the debate on the challenges and opportunities of sectors such as aviation, health, and the digital industry in the era of the new economy. These are the three verticals that feature in the content program for the last two days of the event. Attendees experienced a very intense third day that began with the new content program and will conclude with the Best Startup 2025 Award ceremony, which will take place at the DFactory Barcelona Auditorium and will recognize the best emerging company from each vertical.
Following the success of incorporating the Aviation vertical in the last edition, the BNEW 2025 content program delves even deeper into the intricacies of an industry as essential as it is unknown to society as a whole. Among the sessions that took place on this third day, a panel on the defense industry applied to new technologies stands out, which featured spokespersons from the Ministerio de Defensa; as well as another session on cross-border air corridors for drones, which saw the participation of Aeroports de Catalunya, Universitat de Barcelona, Pirineos Drone and Pildo Labs.
In the words of Blanca Sorigué, general director of the CZFB, “BNEW is a living and resilient event, which evolves to adapt to the needs and concerns of the moment. Just as in the first edition we dedicated one of the verticals to logistics to highlight its importance during the pandemic, throughout the six editions we have been incorporating new sectors, which we considered should be present in the debate on the new economy. This is the case of the Aviation vertical, which we already added in the last edition and which we considered we should continue to highlight this year, as we did three editions ago also with the Health vertical.”
Technological Innovation
In this sense, the program has addressed the fascinating world of corporate aviation, to discover how this exclusive system works. Through different voices from the sector, including corporate terminal managers, private flight operators, institutions, and handling companies, who analyzed the value chain that supports this exclusive service. Another challenge addressed in another panel is the attraction and retention of 4.0 talent in the aeronautical industry, with the help of entities such as the Asociación Española de Usuarios, Empresarios y Profesionales del Transporte Aéreo, Open Cosmos, Fundación i2cat, la Escuela de Ingeniería de Telecomunicaciones y Aeroespacial de Castelldefels de la UPC and the Institut de Ciències de l’Educació de l’URV.
Likewise, representatives from AENA, the Agencia Estatal de Seguridad Aérea (AESA) and Vueling have detailed how technological innovation is transforming airports into intelligent ecosystems, safer, more efficient and passenger-focused, the so-called ‘smart airports’. In this roundtable, they explored how digitalization drives key advances in air traffic management, process automation, airport security, and the personalization of the traveler experience.
Experts conclude that technology is not only driving operational efficiency, sustainability, and resilience of the future airport ecosystem, but it is also redefining the way we experience air travel, from airport access to landing.
For its part, the Health vertical has featured the voices of experts from Hospital del Mar, Fundació Institut Guttmann, Time is Brain, Barcelona Beta Brain Research Center, AMB, Barcelona & Madrid Health Hub, Virmedex Virtual Experiences, Parc Taulí Hospital Universitari de Sabadell, UOC, Hospital Universitario Vall d’Hebron, Societat Catalana d’Obstetrícia i Ginecologia, Hospital Clínic de Barcelona, and the Centro de Análisis y Programas Sanitarios (CAPS), who have addressed, among other topics, pioneering advances in the treatment of neurological diseases, public-private collaboration to enhance technology transfer in metropolitan municipalities, and health from a gender perspective.
Technological Humanization
Digital transformation in Life Sciences and the humanization of technology towards person-centered care in the digital age have also found a place in the program dedicated to the health sector. “Health is not a topic that is foreign to anyone; it absolutely concerns all of us. And the advances thanks to new technologies, as well as the strategic changes in organizations to adapt to new times, are aspects that concern society as a whole. That is why the event’s hybrid format offers the possibility of accessing all this content through the digital platform, as well as on our social networks throughout the year, because from the first edition we considered that BNEW is a window of knowledge open to the world,” highlighted Blanca Sorigué, general director of CZFB.
As revealed by the III Observatory of the New Economy conducted within the framework of BNEW, 71.5% of companies state that they use AI applications in their daily operations and 15.6% plan to incorporate them. In the case of startups, this figure increases to 79.2% that use AI applications and 9.3% plan to incorporate them shortly. The same study reflects that almost all surveyed companies plan to invest in AI, Big Data, Blockchain, or other technologies, although the planned amount for such investments is less than 100,000 euros in 83.3% of cases.
With a long history on the event’s lineup, the Digital Industry vertical brings concepts such as extended reality, industrial automation, robotics, quantum revolution, Artificial Intelligence, Venture Capital, or cyber resilience, among others, to the BNEW audience once again.
Ultimately, the program dedicated to this sector analyzes how large, medium, and small companies, as well as institutions, are facing the digital transformation we are experiencing in the era of the new economy.
Experts and spokespeople from companies and entities such as Siemens, BonÀrea, SEAT, Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Sociedad Española para la Transformación Tecnológica, Repsol, BBVA, Cecot, Frit Ravich, Barcelona Activa, Grow Venture Partners, Suma Capital, JME Ventures, Asabys, Irontec, Celsa Group, Ametic, Ibercaja, Caixabank, Fujitsu, Centro de Ciberseguridad Industrial (CCI), Generalitat de Catalunya, Merlin Edged, Barcelona Regional, or the Ministry of Defense itself, put their experience, knowledge, and success cases on the table during these last two days of the event.
All in all, BNEW 2025 adds a total of 320 speakers, 100 hours of content, and 66 sessions, in three television studios located at DFactory Barcelona. Furthermore, it can be followed via streaming through the BNEW digital platform, which this year incorporates the virtual assistant BBot. This fact reinforces the international nature of the event, which already has registered attendees from more than 80 countries.
