New executive incorporations in Mobile World Capital

June 28, 2012

The Mobile World Capital Barcelona (MWCapital) team is working intensively to set up and develop its various initiatives and firming up the participation of new members in the project. In addition to the Mobile World Congress, the leading annual mobile communications event, the pillars of MWCapital are the Mobile World Hub, concerned with industry and business, the Mobile World Centre, and the Mobile World Festival, focuses on citizens and social activities.

Heading the management team are Ginés Alarcón, as CEO and Juan Manuel Barrionuevo, as Director of Business Strategy and Development. Operations, focused on industrial and business programmes is run by Oscar Pallarols (Mobile Hub Competence Centres) and Aleix Valls (Mobile Hub Capabilities).

The appointments and organisational structure were agreed upon by the Foundation’s Executive Committee, in charge of promoting strategic projects aimed at making Barcelona the mobile world capital, at the head of which as Executive Vice Presidents are John Hoffman, CEO of GSMA, and Agustín Cordón, Managing Director of Fira de Barcelona, who is the first President and will be designing and lead the management team, among other responsibilities.

Extensive professional experience

The CEO, Ginés Alarcón, who is also President of CTecno, graduated in industrial engineering from the Universidad Politécnica de Catalunya (UPC). He was CEO of Colt Telecom Barcelona and T-Systems Iberia, Vice President of the production company Lavinia and President of the consultancy firm that specialises in telecommunications Nae. He also has extensive experience in banking and consulting.

Juan Manuel Barrionuevo is co-founder and, until now, has been in charge of Strategy at Amerigo Telefónica’s capital risk funds network, in which he has worked for the last 12 years, half of them in the President’s office. He graduated in Telecommunications from UPC and has done various masters and postgraduate courses in the Spanish business schools IESE and Esade and at Duke University in the United States. As Head of Strategy, he will coordinate the key functions of the MWCapital, as well as the strategic and industrial alliances of its different partners.

Oscar Pallarols, Director of Mobile Hub Competence Centres –projects to transform industry through mobile technologies– graduated in Telecommunications Engineering from UPC and gained extensive experience in the field as senior manager in Accenture, where he was in charge of several accounts related to telecommunications and high technology.

Aleix Valls, Director of Mobile Hub Capabilities, focused on providing technological resources and expertise needed to guarantee industrial leadership of the projects. He graduated in Mathematics from Barcelona University and obtained a PhD in Engineering from UPC. He has held various positions of responsibility in engineering and consultancy firms, the last one in Accenture, where he worked on strategic consultancy projects in different sectors.

Compass of a mobile future

As Mobile World Capital, Barcelona will become the global flagship for mobile communications and an urban lab for new applications that will transform the daily routine of companies and people, via the development of an industrial and technological fabric based on the potential of mobiles in various areas of daily life, such as health, transport, shopping and leisure.

The successful staging in Barcelona of the Mobile World Congress allowed Spain to become, during the congress, the world epicentre of one of the most important industrial sectors: mobile technology. The Mobile World Capital project will extend this leadership throughout the year, facilitating relations between transformational agents of the mobile industry and other sectors in which mobile technology is playing a crucial role, as well as promoting the participation and interaction of end users with different activities.

One of the pillars of the Mobile World Capital will continue to be the Mobile World Congress that, from 2013 onwards, will be held in the Fira de Barcelona Gran Via Exhibition Centre, which will give room for more visitors and participating companies. The second pillar is the Mobile World Hub, which will promote a national and international industrial programme, structured around various fields where mobiles have a great potential to transform and generate value, such as smart cities, health, transport, and sales transactions, among others.

The other two fundamental elements of MWCapital will focus on end users, allowing them to experience firsthand the changes produced in the mobile industry. The first is the Mobile World Festival, a major event that will include mobile-related cultural and leisure aspects. The second is the Mobile World Centre, which will be a space for permanent interaction with users, where they will be able to discover the industry’s latest advances through exhibitions, conferences, and demonstrations.

The Mobile World Capital Barcelona is run by a Foundation, presided over by the city’s Mayor, Xavier Trias, formed initially by the Ministry for Industry, Trade and Tourism, the Catalan Generalitat, the Barcelona City Council, Fira de Barcelona and GSMA, the association that represents over 800 operators worldwide and over 2000 companies in the extensive mobile ecosystem.