NEWS
IK4-TEKNIKER and the Basque business and technological base will be paying tribute to Iñaki Goenaga, the founder of this R+D centre, on the tenth anniversary of his death and during an event forming part of the celebrations to mark the centenary of the Armeria Eskola (Eibar Technical College).
In a video to be shown during the ceremony, various people who knew Iñaki Goenaga during his lifetime and professional career will be remembering the virtues and achievements of this figure, a beacon in the Basque business and technological sphere.
Early in the 1970s Iñaki Goenaga led the setting up of a testing laboratory at the Armeria Eskola; this laboratory was the seed of what a decade later was to become the IK4-TEKNIKER Research Association. This laboratory, which was initially set up for training purposes, gradually turned into a growing need for the industrial base of Eibar and its area.
A prominent figure in the transformation of the Basque business baseo
When the first Government of the Basque Autonomous Community (region) was constituted in the midst of the transition to democracy [following the demise of Franco], the new Executive committed itself to a change in the production model, adopting a more innovative orientation in which R+D+i was to have a key role to play. Right from the start, Iñaki assumed a leading role in a process which, through the setting up of the Basque network of R+D centres and the Tekniker Association itself, led to the transformation to modernise the Basque business base.
Iñaki Goenaga was also the first director of the Basque R+D centre, which changed its corporate setup from Association to Foundation; this change formally took place on 1 January 1996.
Halfway through the 1980s Iñaki displayed a great business sense and a concern for innovation that was unusual at that time: he decided to reorient the centre towards manufacturing technologies, which since then have been and continue to be the backbone of the centre’s activity.
His vast legacy covers the period from the setting up of the Association of Basque R+D Centres (EITE) and the Fatronik centre and until the centre moved to its current premises. As regards the centre’s activity, which Iñaki directed throughout his professional life, he bequeathed a sound R+D centre with its own unique personality, very close to the needs of companies, with a human capital committed to the project and made up of excellent professionals dedicated to serving its clients.
One should highlight the vision that Iñaki Goenaga displayed when it came to gearing the centre's activity towards precision engineering and micro-technologies as early as 1992, with the constituting of what was then known as "TEKNIKER Micro Machining" and which is now the Department of Micro- and Nanotechnologies.
Alejandro Bengoa, IK4-TEKNIKER's CEO, remembers Iñaki Goenaga as "an untiring worker who radiated enthusiasm. He was a man of vision, a family man, generous and very close; he handed down a sound R+D centre with its own unique personality".
