An internationally acclaimed academic who has helped transform Barcelona's economy in less than two decades says there is no limit to what can be achieved in Canberra if the community seizes the moment.
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Professor Josep Pique led the Spanish city's 22@Barcelona District of Innovation project, a visionary urban renewal initiative launched in 2000 that has already attracted more than 200 million euros in private investment and created 90,000 jobs.
"You never arrive late if you start to run now," he said on Tuesday. "We are in a new [industrial] revolution."
A shared vision for the future, the best possible high speed broadband and wi-fi connectivity and an openness to emerging technologies are just some of the elements needed to transform Australia's only city state into an innovation hub he said.
Research organisations, universities and private companies all have a role to play.
Professor Pique was in Canberra on Wednesday to speak about future directions for the development of the University of Canberra campus between now and 2030.
UOC has embarked on a program of redevelopment and change that will see the campus integrated into its surrounding business and residential communities and lead the charge to transform Canberra into a "knowledge economy".
Professor Pique said UOC could only achieve so much within its own boundaries. Significant, Territory-wide, transformation on a scale similar to Barcelona required a commitment by all universities, existing research hubs, government and commercial entities.
"The UOC is doing a very good strategy; of understanding the responsibility [of shaping the future]," he said. "But it must also be supported by the rest of the universities. It is not a competition, it is a collaboration."
The university's plans to run an "open campus" would pay dividends on many levels.
"The campus can be a part of the city. One of the lessons that we've had [in Barcelona] is that we were transforming the precinct as a human laboratory, a laboratory of the city," he said. "The city was learning what to do. Here come new power sources, here come electric cars and so on."
The integration of advanced ideas and technologies developed in the universities, hi tech industries and government and private research centres into the surrounding community is crucial.
"We need to include the market in the process of innovation," he said. "If you can't sell [ideas] to your local market then you can't sell to the world."
Barcelona's 22@ project was launched 16 years ago to breath new life into the rundown industrial neighbourhood of Poble Nou.
The area has gone from being a significant drain on the public purse to the source of more than 20 million euros in business and property tax revenue a year.
