30 June 2025
This new collaborative governance space has been promoted by Bilbao Ekintza with the collaboration of Orkestra
Its objective is to strengthen the competitiveness of Knowledge Intensive Business Services (KIBS), a strategic area for Bilbao's economy
Last Friday, Bilbao City Council presented the ‘Bilbao Servicios Avanzados’ forum, a new collaborative governance space promoted together with Orkestra to address one of its strategic commitments for the city: Knowledge Intensive Business Services (KIBS). The forum's presentation, presided over by Mayor Juan Mari Aburto, brought together representatives from 50 public and private agents that have been working for months in four key areas to strengthen the competitiveness of KIBS:
- KIBS-Industry connection: this space aims to promote the connection between the city's KIBS and the industrial fabric of Bilbao, Bizkaia, and the Basque Country.
- Bilbao Urban Laboratory: it will enable companies and agents in the KIBS ecosystem to test their projects in controlled and safe environments in the city in order to validate and determine whether what they intend to launch on the market really works, thereby contributing to improving competitiveness and innovation.
- Employment and KIBS: this space seeks to co-define an employment strategy in the field of KIBS for the period 2025-2027, increasing employability and generating new companies and self-employment.
- Zorrotzaurre Urban Innovation District: the objective is to generate an ecosystem with economic and knowledge agents located in Zorrotzaurre to develop collaborative projects that will position the island in the field of KIBS, facilitating relationships and interconnections between agents.
The four workspaces share a common goal: to strengthen the competitiveness of a strategic area for Bilbao's economy, characterized by a high degree of specialization and concentration of skilled employment. According to recent data from Eustat, in 2024 Bilbao accounted for 28% of total employment in KIBS in the Basque Country, with more than 10,100 jobs in professional KIBS (e.g., consulting, accounting, business management, etc.) and 11,200 jobs in technology KIBS (such as IT, engineering, and R&D). These figures highlight the importance of this area as a driver of economic growth and a lever for transformation for the city.
Collaborative governance, the backbone of urban competitiveness policy
This forum is the latest milestone for Bilbao Next Lab, the urban competitiveness policy lab launched in 2013 between the City Council and Orkestra. Over the past decade, Bilbao Next Lab has contributed to transforming the way competitiveness policies are designed and implemented in the city through action research, building spaces and processes that enable public decision-making to be carried out from a deliberative, multi-agent, and consensus-based approach.
Cities face the challenges arising from major transitions (energy-environmental, demographic-social, and digital-technological) with particular intensity, and require new governance models that foster dialogue with urban and regional stakeholders and promote the co-construction of solutions to complex challenges.
Since 2023, Orkestra has been collaborating with Bilbao Ekintza on the design of a collaborative governance model in the field of advanced services. Through action research, collective dynamics are facilitated for the generation of actionable knowledge that strengthens the capacities of both the technical and political staff of the City Council. This approach makes it possible to address issues such as attracting and developing talent, articulating collaboration networks, and connecting with the industrial fabric, while positioning Bilbao as an international benchmark in urban competitiveness policies based on collaboration and shared knowledge.
The presentation of the 'Bilbao Servicios Avanzados' forum consolidates the third stage of the journey that began in 2013, when collaborative governance became the backbone of Bilbao's urban competitiveness policy.
