He is general director for Spain of the Oxford University Innovation and of his own company, Kiatt. His mission: to ensure that research leaves the laboratories and becomes a product that the market demands.
THERE ARE WORLDS that clearly need each other, but do not know how to find each other. Manuel Fuertes knew, at an age when many have not yet hatched, that the science that promised to change the world from laboratories needed capital and business vision to materialise into real products destined to revolutionise our lives. And that is what he has been dedicated to since he was 21, when, without having yet finished his degree in Engineering Sciences at Oxford, he set up a consultancy that was already based in Bristol, London and Shanghai. Fifteen years later he is general director for Spain of the Oxford University Innovation and holds the same position in his own company, Kiatt. In both positions, their main mission is to search for research projects and then design financing mechanisms for science-based companies. “We call it the leg of the three M’s,” he explains, “minds, money and management.” At Kiatt we search for science all over the world and, when we find something that can change the industry, we send a team of experts in the field and in patents to guarantee the viability of the project. Then we create a company with a management team that helps scientists and, finally, we invest to convert knowledge into a product that the market demands. Let’s say that we are a catapult of groundbreaking ideas.”
On his launch ramp are such revolutionary projects as a cellular bioreactor or a Spanish-based cell photocopier that Fuertes compares to what the appearance of the printing press meant for writing, or a screen protector that allows you to see in 3D without using glasses, and that is evolving to ensure that any electronic device can be adjusted according to the needs of the user who uses it.
Talking to Manuel Fuertes is entering the future and experiencing the same excitement as the discoverers. Skin cells that manage to beat, nanorobots that bring medicine only to damaged cells, robots that monitor people in real time, exoskeletons… “I feel privileged because I collaborate with the most intelligent people in the world”, he says.
Fuertes believes that his company’s main value is knowing how to calculate the speed at which technology will be absorbed by society. “We focus on ideas that provide profitability within a period of three to five years, and it is usually high because we are there from the beginning of the project, although that has its risks. We always say we jumped off the cliff and then got on the plane.” When predicting the future, he assures that the great advances of the next 10 or 15 years will focus on health issues, mainly in biotechnology, nanotechnology and robotics applied to quality of life. And that the focus of commercial science is shifting to Asia.
And what happens with Europe and Spain? “In Europe the problem is, above all, political. We are not betting on the new knowledge economy. There are very rigid rules and entrepreneurship requires flexibility”, he explains. “In Spain we only make 1% of discoveries profitable because publishing is more important than commercialising research and because the connection between university and company is quite broken. Science needs to be understood as an opportunity and not as a cost.”
