This November, the director of the La Gaspar Municipal School of Art and Design in Igualada, Raquel Camacho, took part as a member of Leather Cluster Barcelona in the Strategic Cluster Week in Boston.

Organised by ACCIÓ within the Catalonia Clusters programme, with the support of its Foreign Office in New York, this mission brought together 18 executives from Catalan clusters.

The aim of this business trip was to learn about, train in and draw inspiration from Boston's innovation ecosystem, as well as to seek possible international partners to drive collaborative projects. This is the second edition of this initiative held in the capital of Massachusetts, considered one of the epicentres of innovation and R&D worldwide.

Over the course of the week, the Catalan business delegation took part in various training and networking activities with other companies and organisations of different kinds. Of particular note was their attendance at a masterclass given by Professor Michael Enright on the case study that Harvard Business School has published on Catalan cluster policy and its impact on the competitiveness of Catalan companies.

They also attended a talk on conscious capitalism by the founder of that movement, Raj Sisodia, and a training session with the head of the strategy unit at Harvard Business School, the Catalan Ramon Casadesús. In addition, they visited the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where they met various experts in fields such as deep tech, and held meetings with local venture capital funds and with the leading medical technology cluster in the United States, the Massmedic Cluster, as well as learning about the case of the Catalan company Lighthouse Innovation, established in Boston. Furthermore, the executives who took part in this trip were also able to connect with Catalan executives based in Boston and to enjoy an individual agenda of some thirty personalised business meetings, arranged by ACCIÓ.

As director of La Gaspar, Raquel Camacho had a personalised, high-value agenda in the field of design, visiting leading institutions such as Wheaton College, Lasell University and the Wentworth Institute. The “La Gaspar Leather” project generated tangible enthusiasm, opening the door to future international academic collaborations and exchanges.

This week in Boston reaffirms La Gaspar's potential as a benchmark in design and leather goods training at international level.

In Catalonia, cluster policy is articulated through the Catalonia Clusters programme, which the Generalitat has been promoting through ACCIÓ for more than 30 years. At present, 27 Catalan clusters, among them Leather Cluster Barcelona, form part of the programme and bring together 3,000 companies and stakeholders, with a combined turnover of more than 80 billion euros.

Leather Cluster Barcelona is an environment of competitive cooperation for promoting cross-cutting, transformative strategic projects with the aim of driving forward the ecosystem of the Catalan leather sector within the framework of Shared Value policies. The cluster is an accredited entity within the Catalonia Clusters programme and has the support of Acció.