BCD foresees the attendance of more than 20 000 people at lectures, workshops, congresses, exhibitions, awards ceremonies and routes from 22 October to 22 November. These activities will be carried out with the participation and collaboration of various stakeholders and entities of the city. One of the main objectives of IF Barcelona is to raise awareness of the fundamental role that creativity, design and innovation play in social development and progress, in addition to the fact that they are key factors for company competitiveness and the economy. A press conference was held on 21 October 2009 to present IF, the first innovation festival out of a total of six launched by the European Commission. The event, held in the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion, one of the architectural icons of the city, benefited from the presence and participation of Jean Noël Durvy, Director of Innovation Policy at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Enterprise and Industry, Mateu Hernàndez, Manager of Barcelona City Council’s Economic Promotion Sector, Pau Herrera, Executive President of BCD, and Isabel Roig, General Director of BCD. During the event, the programme for IF Barcelona was presented, outlining more than 60 activities that will take place. These activities are addressed to a wide range of people in order to stimulate creativity and innovation and to attract talent, as well as to demonstrate that these elements can be used to respond to our society’s current needs and challenges, while highlighting the primordial role of design as a booster for innovation. European Commission’s representative, Jean Noël Durvy said: 'Europe must take advantage of the power of innovation to transform our society, because if we don’t, then other parts of the world could leave us behind'. He added that European innovation policy 'should be channelled to confront the social challenges that face us' and that 'design is one of the top-priority sectors within the European Commission’s strategy for the future'. The choice of Barcelona as a city to organise one of the six Innovation Festivals and as the place to launch the project comes as the result of its candidature presented by BCD to the European Commission, which was selected with the other five participating cities. In addition to organising IF Barcelona, BCD will be a partner in this European project until 2011. Milan (Italy), Lisbon (Portugal), Tallinn (Estonia), Vilnius (Lithuania) and Kortrijk (Belgium) will take up the baton from Barcelona in order to raise their own international profiles as creative and innovative cities.

Mots clés : Research, Innovation, Youth, New technologies, Research centres, Corporations, Training centres, Federations Unions, Agencies Chambers, Non-profit organisations, Banks, Investment Funds,