Jorge Lasheras, the President of CEJE, attends the inauguration of the new NTT DATA technological innovation centre in Barcelona.

The President of the Japan-Spain Business Circle (CEJE), Jorge Lasheras, attended on Wednesday the inauguration of NTT DATA’s new technology innovation centre, “Living Lab”, in Barcelona, which will be a centre for co-innovation with customers and partners.

The inauguration, presided over by Salvador Illa, President of the Generalitat de Catalunya, underlines the institutional interest in promoting the governance of disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence. During the event, Illa himself stressed the need for ‘the enormous field of possibilities opened up by artificial intelligence to be at the service of the common good’.

The new Living Lab is part of NTT DATA’s strategy to consolidate its presence in the Catalan capital, where it already employs more than 4,000 professionals, and to position Barcelona as one of its main European technology hubs. Víctor López-Barrantes, general manager of NTT DATA Iberia, remarked that the centre ‘responds to an urgent need to anticipate global challenges through co-creation with clients and partners and a commitment to technological solutions that respond to social and economic change’.

This initiative is conceived as an integral innovation space where conceptual ideas, prototypes and real solutions will be developed. It includes co-creation rooms, areas for intensive technological developments and an area of immersive experiences aimed at showing specific applications of emerging technologies.