The final conference of this first stage of Asturias Digital Innovation Hub served to showcase real-life examples of the application of the latest digital technologies in industrial SMEs in Asturias
367 companies advised and eleven million euros of investment mobilized. This is the balance sheet of the activity carried out by Asturias Digital Innovation Hub (AsDIH) in the period 2023–2025, a stage that was symbolically closed at a ceremony held last Friday in the auditorium of Laboral Ciudad de la Cultura, in Gijón.
Among the services provided by AsDIH over these three years, 81 test-before-invest actions worth €1.25 million stand out; of these actions, 23 were initial consultations and 58 were trials and experiments.
These figures show that public-private collaboration to promote the digital transformation of Asturian industry is working, according to Juan Carlos Campo, Deputy Minister of Industry of the Government of the Principality of Asturias, during his speech at the conference.
“In the 2026-28 period, we will no longer be talking about digitalization but about artificial intelligence.”
The conclusion of this first stage will give way to a new period of work for AsDIH, which recently renewed the European Commission’s confidence in its ability to continue supporting the digital transformation of Asturian industry between 2026 and 2028.
“In the 2026-28 stage, we will no longer be talking about digitalization but about incorporating artificial intelligence,” explained Jaime Fernández, head of the New Knowledge Area at the Sekuens Agency, at this final conference of the first stage of AsDIH, entitled “Digital Europe: Advanced Technologies for the Asturian Industry of the Future.”
According to Fernández, the figures presented today are part of our past, our present and also anticipate our future, as our hub will continue to work to “transform” industrial SMEs in the region.
“AI is going to change the world and improve the lives of all humanity.”
The event was attended by Jon Hernández, an artificial intelligence expert, who stressed that “artificial intelligence will change the world and improve the lives of all humanity.”
However, we must not forget that it is “our greatest challenge as a society” and that competitiveness used to be “a knife fight, but now they’ve started pulling out guns.”
“The aim of DIH is for companies to incorporate technologies in the same way as large corporations are doing.”
Susana García, manager of Construcciones García Rama; Cristina Secades, CEO of Finca Terramor; and Susana Martínez, manager of Maderas Siero, are well aware of this. They shared their experiences within the framework of AsDIH, relating to areas as diverse as forestry management and construction.
Their testimonies showed that AI tools can be adapted to any sector and that “the goal of DIH is for companies to learn to incorporate technology as the big players are doing,” as pointed out by Mar Martínez, Associate Director of the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Centre at IESE.
After their speeches, it was the turn of some of AsDIH’s partners: Juan Díaz, Director of R&D&I at ASINCAR; Juan Majada, Director of CETEMAS; Fidel Díez, Director of R&D at CTIC Technology Centre, and Pedro Javier Sáez, Director of the Digital Transformation and Cyber-Physical Systems Department at IDONIAL, looked towards the horizon of our hub with the aim of “offering an evolution to industrial SMEs”.
“We are trying to make Asturias a benchmark.”
There are many horizons to explore, and Enrique Jáimez, general director of the Asturias ICT Cluster; Daniel Sánchez, head of business AI at CTIC Technology Centre; Beatriz Remeseiro, director of the Digitalization area at the University of Oviedo; and Javier Fernández, general director of Digital Strategy and Artificial Intelligence for the Principality of Asturias, are clear about this: “We are trying to make Asturias a benchmark.”
