Executives from around the world visit the cluster with Emilià Duch, the driving force behind the strategic change in the Igualada leather sector

On Monday 26 June, Leather Cluster Barcelona hosted a session of the Competitiveness Summer School 2023, an international training programme on clusters organised each year by IESE and promoted by the Foundation for Clusters and Competitiveness.

IESE is one of the world's leading business schools. The British newspaper the Financial Times recently published its ranking of executive education programmes, placing IESE second in the global classification.

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

The Competitiveness Summer School therefore offers a unique learning experience, combining the academic excellence of IESE with the practical experience of the Foundation for Clusters and Competitiveness, giving professionals from the United States, England, Saudi Arabia, Mexico and Ireland the opportunity to study and discuss global best practices in competitiveness and economic development and to explore the relationship between economic competitiveness and broader issues of environmental sustainability, ethics and inclusion, with examples from around the world.

Leather Cluster Barcelona hosted the first day of the Competitiveness Summer School 2023, thanks to the initiative of Emilià Duch, one of the driving forces behind the implementation of the strategic change methodology in the Igualada leather sector from 1993 onwards. Attendees were able to discover and analyse the process of change in the Igualada leather tanning and finishing industry through the adoption of sustainable practices, until it became the most technologically advanced leather industry, having turned environmental challenges into advantages. The future challenges of Leather Cluster Barcelona were also discussed, and visits were made to the research laboratories of A3 Leather Innovation Center at the Igualada – UdL University Campus and to the tanners' treatment plant, Igualadina de Depuració i Recuperació.

Emilià Duch, a global benchmark in the field of clusters, was one of the driving forces behind the beginning of Catalonia's cluster policy from the 1990s onwards. In recent years he has been Lead Private Sector Specialist of the World Bank's Global Markets and Technology Unit, and his professional experience notably includes his time at IESE Business School, coordinating the European Union's Cluster Excellence Initiative and serving as chief executive of The Cluster Competitiveness Group.

Emilià Duch played a fundamental role in the leather cluster when, thirty years ago, working with the minister Antoni Subirà, considered the intellectual father of cluster policy in Catalonia, he implemented a transformative project to address the challenges facing the leather sector in the early 1990s. 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.

The work of Duch and Subirà with the leather cluster is recognised throughout the world, since it is the first case of a Catalan cluster to have been studied at the prestigious American university of Harvard. Indeed, Emilià Duch himself presented the Harvard leather cluster case during the Competitiveness Summer School 2023 session at Leather Cluster Barcelona. The second part of the case, which he updated years later for IESE and which focuses on the strategic change in the leather sector, was presented by Jordi Vidal, executive director of the cluster.

In addition to the case study taught at Adoberia Bella, the international delegation of company executives was also able to enjoy visits to various stakeholders in the cluster, such as A3 Leather Innovation Center at the Igualada-UdL Campus and the tanners' treatment plant (IDR).

During the intensive working day, company executives from all over the world attended a presentation by Mònica Santamans, project manager, on the evolution, projects and future strategic challenges of Leather Cluster Barcelona.

Anna Bacardit, director of A3 Leather Innovation Center at the Igualada-UdL Campus, gave details of the university centre's various training programmes, most notably the Erasmus Mundus Master in Innovative Leather Technology. For his part, Bernat Vilarrubias, manager of the company Igualadina de Depuració i Recuperació SL (IDR) and president of Leather Cluster Barcelona, showed the new pilot plant for regenerating treated water and giving it a second life.

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. The cluster is an accredited entity within the Catalonia Clusters programme and has the support of Acció.