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18 September 2024 reading time: 7 minutes

Boosting youth innovation in San Sebastian

San Sebastian, known for its beauty and strong research culture, as well as being a starting point for pilgrims on the Camino, is facing a demographic challenge: the city’s average age is 46, with an aging population and shrinking numbers of youth. To address this, San Sebastian is investing heavily in engaging and retaining young talent. Through a combination of education, employment, housing, and innovation initiatives, the local government is working to ensure that the city remains a dynamic environment for the next generation of innovators.

Iñigo Olaizola, Managing Director at Fomento San Sebastian, the city’s economic development agency, emphasises the city’s strategic approach: “We’ve been working for the last decade to attract and retain talent, but we also realised how important it is to cultivate the next generation and listen to their needs.” This focus on young talent is now one of the main pillars of San Sebastian’s strategy, helping the city maintain its competitive edge while addressing the demographic shift.

A good example of the city’s community building process is WeekINN, the Innovation Week that is organised every year by Fomento San Sebastian to engage residents on the topic of innovation. The event gathers more than 5,000 people every year with over 30 activities across the city. Naturally, young people are one of the target groups, since they are essential for the development of a sustainable city and the economic root for the innovation ecosystem in the long term.

Support for youth employment

Last year, the city stepped up its efforts to boost youth employment with a new package totalling €1.5 million, designed to support people under 35 years old. As Olaizola explains, “We have to ensure that our young people from San Sebastian can work in their city, offering them financial aid to create their own innovative companies, promote and strengthen those they have recently created, and support companies in our science and innovation ecosystem to hire qualified young people.”

We have to ensure that our young people from San Sebastian can work in their city
— Iñigo Olaizola

Grants amounting to €650,000 are being directed towards creating companies with high innovation potential through acceleration programmes like Ekinn+ and Ekinn+ Health. Ane Oyarbide, Councillor for Local Economy and Employment, highlights that the goal is to give young people the opportunity to “develop their professional and personal projects” within their city. These programmes include bonuses of up to €25,000 per project to accelerate growth. Special bonuses of up to €10,000 per project are available for startups opening business premises.

This package also includes €527,000 allocated for the consolidation and growth of innovative companies, with new grants of up to €20,000 per company to facilitate hiring young talent and covering strategic expenses. The Technological Vouchers programme, in collaboration with the city’s seven leading research centres, is further bolstering San Sebastian’s innovation ecosystem with specialised services and advice, helping young companies scale up and thrive.

€140,000 in grants supports the hiring of young researchers, with bonuses for first-time hires, women, PhD candidates, and returning talent. This is complemented by Global Training Mobility Scholarships that offer young professionals international experience to enhance the local workforce.

An academy for the next generation

This year, in October, San Sebastian will open an opportunity for local and international collaboration in youth engagement by hosting the Eurocities Next Generation Academy. This is a platform designed for cities to connect and empower young people to tackle urban challenges.

The Next Generation Academy offers a unique opportunity for young leaders to engage directly with local challenges, fostering innovative thinking and urban problem-solving skills. Young urban experts and specialists, and young city staff from Eurocities member cities are invited to join.

This edition will focus on bridging the gap between the environmentally sustainable needs of the emerging labour market and the aspirations of young talent. This challenge-based event will explore how to design innovative public policies that align the needs of the local economy with the demands of young people, ensuring that cities remain competitive and able to foster a thriving, engaged community. If you fit the bill, read more and apply here.

Engaging young talent

“Young talent is now one of the main axes of our strategy,” says Olaizola. The city’s Innovation Challenge has been a key initiative within this framework, running for over seven years and engaging students from schools, universities, and vocational training centres.

In the form of a challenge, highly adaptable to new circumstances, this project creates a space for young people to learn how to find innovative solutions to real-world problems through teamwork, from robots that help elderly people, to creating a better future for the city. This best practice was the winner of the Eurocities Awards 2022. “We’ve been working together with a critical mass of young people to understand their needs, and now we’re asking them how they want to shape the future of the city,” Olaizola explains.

We’ve been working together with a critical mass of young people to understand their needs
— Iñigo Olaizola

As Olaizola points out, an innovative approach to youth engagement is not just about increasing the capacity of the young, but also helping businesses adapt to the needs of local and international youth. “It’s about listening to them, understanding their needs, and giving feedback to local companies. This ensures that the integration between generations happens smoothly.” In a two-way system, Fomento co-creates policies with young people, ensuring that their voices are heard and that they can play a direct role in shaping the future of San Sebastian.

Housing for young innovators

A key part of retaining young talent is ensuring they have access to affordable housing, currently a significant challenge across much of Europe. To address this, Fomento launched Talent House, a programme that initially offered accommodation for international researchers. However, as Olaizola explains, “We realised it wasn’t just about attracting international talent. We needed to ensure that local young people had opportunities to stay in the city, too.” The programme has thus been expanded to provide housing for young innovators and entrepreneurs from San Sebastian through the EKINN project, the new-in-the-city house for entrepreneurs.

We needed to ensure that local young people had opportunities to stay in the city
— Iñigo Olaizola

Talent House and EKINN account for 160 apartments, offering affordable housing for those working on innovative projects. This pilot project allows young entrepreneurs to live in the city for up to two years while they establish their careers. According to Olaizola, “This is a real opportunity for our young people to have their first home and develop their careers in San Sebastian.”

International DNA

San Sebastián has actively worked with other cities to share best practices and develop joint initiatives. “It doesn’t make sense to do things on our own because we’re a small, medium-sized city,” Olaizola explains. “International cooperation is in our DNA.” Taking place over a decade ago, an INTERREG project, which focused on attracting and retaining talent, laid the foundation for San Sebastian’s ongoing collaborations with European partners.

International cooperation is in our DNA
— Iñigo Olaizola

The municipality’s international mobility programmes are one example: “We had the possibility to send someone for six months to any city in the world, but especially in Europe,” Olaizola notes. Many of the young people who take part in these programmes return to San Sebastian and continue contributing to the city’s growth.

Some join research centres, while others launch their own startups, benefiting from the support of Fomento’s services. Olaizola highlights the impact: “They often remain engaged in our ecosystem, and they’re our best ambassadors, having worked through the whole chain of services we offer.”

Returning to regenerate

Take for example Sugoi Retegui, one of the founders of NESU Technologies, a San Sebastian-based start-up in the growing field of regenerative medicine, which focuses on repairing or replacing damaged tissues and organs. He initially participated in the Connecting Talent Mobility Programme and studied at Harvard Medical School.

He’s a perfect example of how we support young people at every stage of their journey
— Iñigo Olaizola

Upon returning to San Sebastian, he continued his research with the Biogipuzkoa Research Centre and benefited from the Local Residency Programme at Talent House, as well as incubation support and subsidies for his innovative biomedical start-up. “He’s a perfect example of how we support young people at every stage of their journey,” Olaizola says. Today, Retegui is on the verge of launching his company.

San Sebastian is building a future rooted in innovation, sustainability, and inclusivity. Through its focus on youth, the city is ensuring that its next generation of leaders and innovators has the tools and opportunities they need to thrive. In the words of Olaizola, “We’ve been growing slowly but steadily, co-creating this future with our young people. It may take time, but we truly believe that the results will be worth it – and we’re already starting to see them.”

Author:
Anthony Colclough Eurocities Writer

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