- Igape director Covadonga Toca attends Al-Andalus Innovation Venture in Seville, where she highlights the role of public authorities in facilitating connections between start-ups, businesses, technology providers, investors and markets
- She highlights Galicia’s Business Factories model, developed in partnership with leading companies to tackle real challenges in strategic sectors and help innovative solutions reach businesses
- She says a major challenge is supporting projects beyond their early stages so they can win customers, attract investment, expand internationally and scale up
Seville, 22 September 2026
Igape director Covadonga Toca today highlighted the Xunta’s commitment to “industrialising innovation” by helping turn new technological solutions into business activity, investment, growth and jobs. She was speaking at Al-Andalus Innovation Venture in Seville during a round-table discussion entitled “The importance of public administration in regional ecosystems”, which examined how public authorities can help innovative projects develop.
Toca Carús advocated for public authorities to act as facilitators, connecting existing resources and supporting businesses at every stage of their development. She stressed that the challenge is not simply to help new projects get off the ground, but to ensure that those with potential can find customers, funding and markets in which to grow.
“We have talent, expertise, start-ups, businesses, technology centres and funding. The next step is to connect all these resources more effectively around real business projects,” she said. She emphasised the importance of linking technology to business needs so that innovation has a tangible impact on the economy.
In this context, she highlighted Galicia’s network of Business Factories: accelerators specialising in strategic sectors and developed in partnership with businesses. The model enables start-ups to work on real industry challenges from the outset and to engage with companies that can help validate their solutions, become technology partners or first customers, or provide a route to market.
Toca Carús said the success of innovative entrepreneurship programmes should be measured by more than the number of projects taking part. What matters, she argued, is whether those projects can win customers, attract investment, bring their solutions into industry and grow. “Acceleration is not the end goal; the aim is to move from pilot to market, and from start-up to a business capable of growth,” she stressed.
The Igape director concluded that Galicia already has talent, expertise, businesses, technology and funding. The next step, she said, is to connect these resources more effectively around real business projects. “Rather than adding new pieces to the ecosystem, we need to make the pieces we already have work better together,” she said, highlighting the connection between innovation, industry, funding and markets as the key to helping more projects scale up.
