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Bestiario: how to be more digital in order to stay analogue

Bestiario: how to be more digital in order to stay analogue

Jose Aguirre, CEO of Bestiario

What does Bestiario do?

We help our clients adapt their businesses to the new times and use their data to increase their profits.

How long have you been part of the company?

I founded the business in September 2005, together with Raimon Mirada, Andrés Ortiz, Carolina Vallejo, and Santiago Ortiz.

What do you like most about your work?

I like being around really bright people with tremendous curiosity about everything going on around them. It’s great to work in a creative and innovative environment that has few hierarchies and meetings and with professionals skilled in teamwork who understand that results are based on working effectively rather than staying for long hours. Furthermore, we are lucky enough to work with a wide variety of companies on the most varied projects. These include biotechnology, satellite photography, banking, the automobile industry, gastronomy, the luxury industry and the traceability of the elements involved in the construction.

And what do you like least?

Many companies in Spain are highly bureaucratic and set up to prevent failure. This means they often just copy exactly what the competition does. In an environment like this, it is very hard to find business partners that are keen to promote new ideas, make decisions, and commit themselves to innovation. I might be overstressing my point, but I’d say that if we are don’t talk directly to the president or general manager of a company, there’s a much greater chance of failing in innovative and truly disruptive projects, unlike in other countries, especially America and Britain, where executives are often paid to take risks (and make mistakes).

What do you think your company is particularly good at?

I think we work in a different way from the rest of our competition, and our portfolio of clients and projects is proof of that. We like to think that things can be done differently and that is what we set out to do. We have a highly diversified team made up of consultants, engineers, designers, mathematicians, architects and data scientists. We are fast and efficient. And we love our work and do it very well. And that makes all the difference. At the same time, since we have been working for fifteen years on innovation processes in a very wide range of industries and markets, our clients benefit from all the knowledge we have accumulated over the years.

What is your main challenge?

After almost fifteen years, Bestiario is still a startup. Our challenge for the next five years is to grow it exponentially in order to reach our market potential. We have been signing up new and talented people for a couple of years so that when the opportunity arises, which I feel is very close, we can take the leap to the next level.

Where is your company located?

We were previously in the Passatge Mercader, but now we are on Balmes with Via Augusta. I chose both locations because there is a pedestrian street nearby so that when you leave the office you are in the city center and you can walk anywhere.

What do you like most about the neighborhood where you work?

Despite being on Balmes street, one of the city's main arteries, I like the fact you can immediately dive down a side-street and you don’t feel you’re in a big city any more.

How important is Barcelona for your company?

I like Barcelona a lot. I’m from Madrid and one of the reasons I decided to settle in Barcelona is that the city reflects the nature of a diverse company like Bestiario and has always been created by people from all over the world.

With which city would you compare Barcelona to? 

It's a bit random, but it's a mix of my favorite cities: Havana, New York, Tangier, Lisbon and Tokyo.

What city model should Barcelona adopt?

I'm not a big fan of turning cities into copies of anything else. I prefer to do my bit by helping all the people who live here feel at home; I think that this crisis is the perfect time to think about a new Barcelona that is much more in line with the times to come. And I think there needs to be a mix of talent, tradition and an ecological approach.

What best practices from other cities would you like Barcelona to adopt??

I would like to see the large number of parks and bicycles one sees in Copenhagen, the respect for architecture typical of Paris, and the peace and quiet of Berlin and Lisbon. Barcelona is a very noisy city and it is mostly dedicated to the service sector. So I think it would be good to diversify its economy more and much more imaginatively.

What would you ask of the Barcelona of the future?

I would like it to be a city that is better suited to the people who live here, more self-sufficient and much less dependent on tourism. More environmentally-friendly and car-free, it should be a city that is committed to innovation to help improve people's lives and not just "innovation as decoration". More digital in order to stay analogue.

More information at https://www.bestiario.org/

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