I have retired from the World Bank, but continue active providing personalized strategic advice on economic development through ecosystem-focused initiatives
My goal continues to be to help governments and economic development institutions building their teams capacity
I bring the experience in multilaterals, government, academia and private sector
Global Lead Private Sector Specialists (2013-2023)
Implementation of sustainable cluster-based economic development projects in a wide range of country contexts.
Development of frontier technology applications in sector-based competitiveness.
Capacity building of internal and external teams.
Knowledge management and diffusion of sustainable and inclusive cluster-based competitiveness methodology
Chairman of the Board of Trustees (2023- present)
The Foundation is the knowledge center for the European Cluster Excellence Initiative, curates materials and organizes educational programs.
Founder and CEO (1994-2012)
Founder of The Cluster Competitiveness Group (www.competitiveness.com), a consulting company exclusively dedicated to cluster-based competitiveness programs that operates on five continents with a recognized competitive position.
Knowledge developer, learning from over 250 projects, in more than 30 regions.
Instructor of client teams, designing and teaching nine months case method training programs to the governments.
Speaker in multiple international conferences organized by development institutions.
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Director of the Competitiveness Summer School (2008- present)
Director of the Competitiveness Summer School, hosted in Washington, DC by the Inter-American Development Bank and in Barcelona by the Barcelona Graduate School of Economics and the IESE Business School.
Professor in similar programs in other universities: Chile (Universidad Adolfo Ibañez), Brazil (Fundaçao Dom Cabral), Mexico (Instituto Tecnologico de Sonora) and Trinidad Tobago (University of West Indies).
Coordinator of the European Cluster Excellence Initiative, a project of the European Commission, led by IESE Business School and 13 European governments and institutions, to improve the competitiveness and innovation of clusters in Europe.
35 years of experience in more than 50 countries
I started my career serving in the Spanish Foreign Economic Service, posted in the embassies of Baghdad (1983-86) and Helsinki (1987-88) and then sent to graduate school at Harvard.
After graduating in 1991, I joined Monitor Company, working in Italy, Spain, Greece, and Colombia. I created Competitiveness.com to focus on work in Europe, first in my country Catalonia, then Spain, Italy, France, the UK, Sweden, and Denmark. In 2003, we started collaborating with the InterAmerican Development Bank with projects in Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and the Caribbean.
From 2009 to 2013, I coordinated the Cluster Excellence project for the European Union, which involved partners from thirteen member countries and applied the resulting knowledge to all members and accession countries.
In 2023, I joined the World Bank as Global Lead in Value Chain development, covering all countries and having carried out initiatives in Benin, Botswana, Croatia, Haiti, India, Jordan, Peru, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Vietnam and many others.