Manuel Fuertes, president of Kiatt Group
At only 21 years old – but from Oxford, where he was finishing his studies – Manuel Fuertes began investing through his own engineering consultancy and working for large international brands such as Rolls-Royce. In 2009, he was running a head office in Shanghai and 130 engineers on staff. The time had come to sell the company, but not before attracting the attention of a series of professionals around him, willing to co-invest in the processes he selected. A reputation that began to spread throughout England and Asia and that brought together very interesting profiles around him, all eager to know the where, how – and with whom – he would decide to take the next step.
Thus, back in Oxford, Fuertes launched Kiatt (Knowledge, Innovation And Technology Transfer) “as a way to organize, manage and coordinate investments and structure the network of professional contacts to bring companies based on intellectual property to the market” . But not everything goes, quite the contrary. Fuertes and his team detect scientific projects with social and economic impact and guarantee the technology transfer process by serving as a link between the scientific and entrepreneurship field with the business, financial and investment field.
The Three M’s
According to Fuertes, there are three worlds with which we work in the technology transfer process. “And they are very different from each other.” The mind, “in reference to the scientific potential based on obtaining a series of results with specific objectives”, management, “based on the typical profile of entrepreneurship, agility and adaptation to change”, and thirdly, investors (money), “focused on the economic increase derived from correct management and capital investment,” he explains.
A framework developed in Oxford in which the axis of the Three M’s is the point at which the technology transfer process is located, “and therefore Kiatt is too”. A methodology that has brought them success and that makes the businessman look optimistically to the future. “The environment, in constant evolution and growth, offers us unlimited opportunities. We continue to look for projects that come from first-class scientific findings to support them in order to create leading companies with great social impact.”
The best positioned technologies
After leaving behind a 20th century dominated by the evolution of electronics, witness to the birth of the digital era, Fuertes believes that in the 21st century two trends will turn several disciplines upside down. On the one hand, the union of the biological, the electronic and the digital to improve human beings, “and other living beings”; and on the other hand, the Internet of Things and 50 billion devices connected to each other in 2020, which will make it possible to automate a large number of processes and jobs – “including some very complex ones, such as legal defence or accounting” – and avoid accidents thanks to intelligent predictive analysis that will make us “see the future”.
“It is a matter of time before someone without any serious disability shows up at a hospital and asks to have their slightly myopic eyes replaced with ocular implants with which they can see in high definition and even zoom,” explains Fuertes, who along with the bionics, highlights the relevance of nanotechnology, especially in medicine with the synthesis of personalised medications, the manufacture of nano-capsules that will travel alone through the body, adhering only to cancerous tissues and destroying them, avoiding current painful treatments; the 3D printing of organs that will not generate rejection in the patient as they are made from their own DNA, or the manufacture of nano-coatings for implants, such as hip implants, with absolutely new materials that not only will not cause infections, but they will prevent them.
A little further away, at some point in the next century, Fuertes believes it is likely that, what has been called the Internet of Living Things, will be formed. “We are already seeing a preview of this idea, with the use of wearable technologies that transmit data about our health, location and activities instantly. I have no doubt that at some point, thanks to the intervention of bionics and nanotechnology, we will not need to “dress” with technology, but rather the very organism of living beings will connect directly to the Internet of Living Things, and “we will be able to communicate interchangeably with human beings and electronic devices using the same language.” Riding the time machine, once again in the present, Fuertes does not want to forget the decisive influence that robotics and augmented/virtual reality provide.
Spain and learning to eat the piece of the cake
“It would be a mistake to say that research is not facilitated in Spain or even that it is not funded,” explains Fuertes, who believes that the country has high-quality scientists, “so much so that they have been a key reference for his colleagues in other countries”, who unfortunately have been more effective when it comes to commercializing them and generating benefits for their country using Spanish basic science.”
A perception in which he understands that it is important for Spain to make an extra effort to protect and transfer research results to the global market in the form of products and services through good companies. In the process, we must try to recover the talent that left the country, “something that is not necessarily bad,” so that they can safely apply the knowledge acquired abroad.
Yes, he is critical of the field of action that he best dominates. “We lack strategy when choosing the research projects to finance”.
An example to follow? Singapore
Fuertes does not hesitate to ‘geolocate’ the best place to undertake science and technology. “Singapore has changed radically since 1991, doubling investment in R&D and today it represents 2.28% of the national GDP”. Capital injections that enable the creation, within the Ministry of Industry and Commerce, of the National Research Foundation (NRF), chaired by the country’s prime minister in person, and the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR).
“They have activated a technology transfer ecosystem so that nothing escapes them and through these two organizations, numerous scholarships easier processes are offered to entrepreneurs to carry out scientific and technological-based startups, offering aid of up to $750K per company”.
The union between academia and industry, a powerful private initiative and a global education that encourages entrepreneurship, complete the pillars that make Singapore, “like other Southeast Asian countries”, a reference that, at least tangentially, should be taken into account.
