Executives from various countries study the Harvard case featuring the Catalan leather cluster

Leather Cluster Barcelona has hosted a session of the Competitiveness Summer School 2025, an international training programme on clusters organised each year by IESE and promoted by the Foundation for Clusters and Competitiveness (Fundació Clusters i Competitivitat).

IESE is one of the leading business schools in the world. Its executive education programmes rank among the very best in international rankings.

For its part, the Foundation for Clusters and Competitiveness is an organisation that promotes the cluster management training methodology and has become a world authority in capacity building for professionals everywhere; it was represented by Reza Zadeh, its executive director.

The session began with a presentation by Carla Vélez, project manager, on the evolution, projects and future strategic challenges of Leather Cluster Barcelona.

During the training day, executives from the United States, India, Lebanon, Slovakia, Kenya, Romania and Spain learned at first hand, at the Adoberia Bella, headquarters of Leather Cluster Barcelona, about the Harvard Business School case “The Catalan Leather Industry” (9-795-105, 15 February 1995). Presented by Emilià Duch, a global benchmark in the field of clusters and driving force behind the strategic change of the Igualada leather sector, this transformative project, designed to address the challenges facing the leather sector in the early 1990s, became the first case of a Catalan cluster to be studied at Harvard.

The public-private collaboration begun at that time, based on a new strategic approach to remaining competitive, led to the construction and commissioning of the Igualadina de Depuració i Recuperació (IDR) treatment plant, one of the most illustrative examples of the advantage of belonging to a cluster.

Indeed, during the intense working day, business executives from all over the world were able to visit the IDR treatment plant and also A3 Leather Innovation Center, the research group of the Universitat de Lleida (UdL) specialising in the leather production chain. The research of the A3 Center focuses on innovation, quality and the environment, with an emphasis on the sustainability of manufacturing processes and on the application of new technologies and advanced materials.

Leather Cluster Barcelona is an environment of competitive cooperation for promoting cross-cutting and 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 body within the Catalonia Clusters programme and has the support of Acció.