Asier Alea is the Director of Global Development at the Basque Culinary Center. Born in Bilbao, he holds a double degree in Economics and International Relations (first in his class) from Boston University, a master's degree in Economic Policy from the University of Oxford, a PhD in Economic Policy from the University of Oxford, and an MBA (Master of Business Administration) from MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

We had the opportunity to talk with Asier about GOe, the Gastonomy Open Ecosystem that will open its doors in the spring of 2025. This new building will offer the city of Donostia an open space, where students, entrepreneurs and companies in the field of food will come together, together with the citizens. The capital of Gipuzkoa will therefore be a reference and a pioneer in adopting a site with these characteristics.

What is GOe?

GOe is an acronym for Gastronomy Open Eco-system. Speaking of acronyms, the word Ecosystem and Open are terms that are overused today, but that's exactly what we're trying to create. GOe means, both from the point of view of the building itself and from the philosophy, to unite in a single value proposition the components already presented by the Basque Culinary Center, i.e. academic talent, students, collaborators, teachers, entrepreneurs, companies and the general public, citizens, agents in a place where all of them will have the opportunity to interact, on the one hand to train this talent, and, on the other hand, most importantly, to help create new solutions, some of the new solutions required by the field of gastronomy and food, that is. To be clear, there are some places or entities that can be similar or comparable to GOe, but none in the field of food or gastronomy. In that sense, GOe is a bet.

What is the origin of his birth?

GOe is an intuition and an observation. It can be explained in the same way that the Basque Culinary Center was created, as an intuition of the need to create the first university of gastronomic sciences. Until then, most of the teaching, education in the field of gastronomy, was carried out by catering schools or vocational training centers. They did an excellent job, but the intuition was that a large part of the knowledge that was being created also required other bachelor's, master's, doctoral programs... So a private non-profit foundation was created, with various stakeholders, the University of Monmouth, private companies , with the Basque Government, the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa, the City of Donostia... and with that intuition, when creating this foundation, the first project was created, the first faculty of gastronomic sciences in the world.

Today, it is seen as a complete success, filling a gap that was not covered. This faculty was created 13 years ago, and 7 years ago, it was later completed with BCC Innovation, the first technology center for gastronomy. Let's say that it is a technological center attached to the network of Basque and national technological centers, that provides services to companies, especially in the areas of the senses, cooking and gastronomy, and complements other technological centers very well, such as AZTI, in the Basque Country. And we already have two legs, the faculty and the technological center.
In that sensory part, there are not many centers of knowledge, both in the field of education and also in the field of innovation. So we thought it was the right time to increase the quota.

When will it be available?

The work started in the second half of November and should be completed in 19 months. We are talking about the spring of 2025.

What are its goals?

In very general terms, it would be a new workspace for companies and entrepreneurs, where they can interact with our faculty members. New master's degrees will also be created, although the faculty remains, but there are more frontier master's that will be created with GOe, for example, the new field of artificial intelligence and nutrition, and another master's series.
Therefore, GOe is, first of all, a space to create new products, or to host products that already exist in other parts of the world or that have been created by entrepreneurial companies, where they will have the opportunity to test them, before they go to market. This is like the Alpha and Omega of a food product. You can create it together or make final adjustments before taking it to market.

Therefore, the main objectives are the creation of new products, the adaptation of some existing ones, the launch of new master's degrees in the field of nutrition and also to help entrepreneurs make prototypes or create new startups.

What need does it come to cover?

In the food sector, as in many other areas, companies and entrepreneurs often need places that create this formula, which can gather all this talent, both between them, that is, the company and the entrepreneur, and with the third leg, that is, academic talent, students and our no technological entrance Therefore, this need is even more important than in other sectors.

The food sector is very special if we compare it with others that are currently in a process of change, such as energy. The food sector must take into account very diverse profiles in the creation of new proposals. On the one hand, you must have a nutritionist, you must have engineers in the field of organic chemistry, then the new proposal, the new product you are designing, who know how to scale, and then a third actor, which is an expert in the sensory part, known in English as Chef Scientis . Until now, with few exceptions, formulas were not created where these people should be in the same space. This generally creates a line in which the nutritionist talks to the organic chemist at the beginning, and then, when the product is very advanced, it is taken to the sensory side to improve it.

We are talking about profiles that speak very different languages, until we have a center like ours, I am talking about the faculty, who did not join the programs that united those three legs. The Basque Culinary Center, in its training, both at the bachelor's degree, at the master's level and also at the doctoral level, has united these three legs that unite organic chemistry and nutrition, like the sensory section, and it will be at the disposal of the companies that will work with us.

What space will GOe occupy?

We designed from the beginning that the spaces should be very diverse, but that all these actors should pass through, that is, the labs where entrepreneurs, students and companies will work, and that these labs should also be visitable and/or interactive with the public. Very open laboratories, because they have to be available to very different agents, but entrepreneurs, students, teachers, companies, and also the citizens who often visit them, have to interact there.

Very strict laboratories, then spaces for education and teaching, but also very open. A large part of what will be done there should be open to third parties, so that I, like Asier Alea, can go to a master class of someone we have brought from Denmark, Germany, the United States or Shanghai. Training spaces for our master's students, but they should be open for our collaborating companies to attend. This will always be repeated: as far as possible, these actors I mentioned earlier, entrepreneurs, companies, student talent, collaborators and citizens, must be able to interact in these spaces.

What will it contribute to the city, the Basque Country and even Spain?

What will contribute to the city, with the exception of certain nuances, is scalable to the Basque Country and even to the state level. Of course, the city will benefit the most, as long as it is more than a visit and a place to live; to be a place that continues to create an advanced economy, especially following a bit of that commitment to smart specialization cities. We believe that it makes perfect sense for Donostia, Gipuzkoa and Euskadi to be one of the lighthouses where future food solutions are created, especially considering that Donostia is a leader in the sensory field. Therefore, the city itself, both from the point of view of quantifiable activity, and according to the number of startups, the number of innovation projects, the number of doctoral students, etc., in the field of gastronomy and food, and from the point of view of the city brand, will take an evolutionary step. In other words, it is no longer just a city where people eat well and has a higher number of Michelin stars per inhabitant, but it is becoming a world reference city in the field of senses, sensory innovation, gastronomy and food innovation.

Then it can be extended to all actors, that is, at the territorial level, at the Euskadi level, and if you hurry, it can also be used at the national level and it is credible. As it may seem a little more forced in other sectors, this smart specialization of the city as a creator of new advanced services is an evolutionary step, and, logically, in the case of Donostia, we don't have to explain why; it is quickly understood.

And what will it mean for the world of gastronomy?

This evolution of the Basque Culinary Center will help the world of gastronomy, that is, gastronomy, not only hospitality, because it is important and because it is our roots, to confirm that the world of gastronomy is innovation. That it's talent that's also helping to create a more sustainable world, and not just from the point of view of the phrase, but really all these actors that we have here will help us create those solutions. With the name Open Ecosystem, we wanted to make it very clear that the Basque Culinary Center is obviously the engine, the axis of GOe, but it was born around an ecosystem. An ecosystem that wants to be global, but also because of its 0 kilometers, culinary tea because it is small, and we believe that this makes us stronger and makes our proposal much more attractive for companies. Nowhere else in the world will they have this concentration of gastronomic talent, a faculty, an ad-hoc designed space, I'm thinking of companies and entrepreneurs, as well as students from other parts of the world.

I think that this strengthens the creation of these other innovative activities of gastronomy, of the industry in general as a sector. And then at the level of gastronomy, at 0 kilometer, in Donostia, in the Basque Country, we will use this talent in other types of activities; we open the fan even more.