Interview with Ricardo Llavona.

Good morning Ricardo. What does the entity do?

Biocrew Healthcare Capital is a company whose main objective is to promote technological and non-technological innovation in the life sciences field. We carry out two fundamental activities.

At Biocrew Invest we help companies to obtain private investment from the informal venture capital (Business Angels) or from regulated risk capital. From Biocrew Transfer we help companies, institutions, researchers, entrepreneurs in the process of promoting ba

How do you experience innovation in the day-to-day life of your organization?

For us, innovation is lived constantly and intensely. Either with the direct relationship with the projects in which we are collaborating at different levels or with the new proposals that come to us continuously. Our fully sectorial profile and our active participation within the sector make us especially attractive for emerging companies in life sciences. We receive proposals from multiple locations, especially from Spain and Europe.

How do they innovate and how do they do it?

Our area of ​​action is life sciences and their fusion with emerging technologies. In this sense, the projects can be from different areas. From Biotechnology, development of Medical Devices and solutions in the field of Digital Health. Our role focuses on two main aspects.

The sector is complex for the development of emerging technologies, long development times, strict regulatory aspects, high volumes of financing, significant difficulties in evaluating companies according to traditional economic methods … private financing being essential for these projects. Our task is to channel this private financing that allows us to follow the path of these projects after initial phases of development covered with public funds.

Our other task is to facilitate the arrival of these projects on the market, as the fundamental principle of innovation must always be the “valorization of the invention”. How can Innovasturias help you to promote innovation in your entity? In multiple ways, mainly due to the possibility of growing in collaborative environments essential to develop these processes.

And your vision of Asturias around innovation?

With difficulties as in all regions. It is complex to value all the actions that revolve around innovation because it is not easy to demonstrate the return on this investment and especially it is not in the short term, which is often considered minor areas within corporations.

Another difficulty is attitude and tradition. The traditional model of our region with a direct or indirect public weight in business development makes it difficult to change paradigms. It is not only the “supply of capital” that explains the intense or scarce presence of companies of these characteristics in a territory.

Is a question of attitude to eventual possibilities of pursuing intense growth and the socio-economic and socio-cultural guidelines that form the ecosystem in which these companies will develop. In our specific area, another possible negative handicap is the lack of specific weight of the non-healthcare BIO sector in the regional business economy.

Although in the current global scenario this could not be a brake on the search for opportunities that come from one of our greatest assets, the high level of research and assistance in the region.