Posts Tagged ‘innovar en tiempo de crisis#8217;

Jonas Ridderstrale, author of the Funky Business and other books as well as management professor, started his lecture at IE Business School Graduation Ceremony last July by talking about the reduction of ETBS: the expected time between the surprise. From his point of view, surprise is here to stay both in our personal and professional life, so we have not to only embrace it but BE the surprise!

He pointed out two major issues that are changing the perception of things as we knew them… The first one is what he called the EVEolution, the feminization of our societies. To his surprise some people treat women as if they were small men! Whether we like it or not, Ridderstrale stressed that are different even in the way we shop. The second is the process of de-regulating life. We are free to know, free to go, be exactly what we want to be, which has direct impact on business trends. In his opinion, we need to learn how to be competitive in a deregulated world.

This is very interesting to follow-up and harvest the knowledge of a discussion that has started last week on MET Program´s LinkedIn group after the event “Innovating in times of economic uncertainty” where the latter word was definitely one of the most used by the speakers: Mark Spelman and Joel Kurtzman. It was triggered by the question: “How much uncertainty can we bare in our professional and personal life? Is there a gender difference in this matter? Could women take, bare and adapt to uncertain conditions faster or better than men?”

Mark not only stated that
2009 will be rememberd as the year we changed the way we do business,
but also said that we would have more uncertainty and volatility than
ever in terms of politics, economics, financial markets and
environment. It can transform into opportunities instead of being just
a thread, but we need to disregard the assumptions that worked for past
times and embrace new tools to address new problems to create the right
ecosystem that works. We then wonder how much uncertainty we can take. A professor at IE once said
that we can bare quite high levels of it as long as we have good
leaders that can transmit passionately the direction towards a company
is heading.

Ignacio Villoch (Marketing Manager at BBVA´s Innovation Center and MET Program Mentor) expressed that we will evolve to tolerate greater levels of uncertainty as we have already done for we tolerate much more volatility in our lives that our grandparents did. He also thinks that we may try to anchor ourselves to other “fixed” references (real or imaginary) and seek for other “certainties” (groups, relations, etc.) to counterbalance the vertiginous and even scary feelings triggered by uncertainty. Being careful about not getting into a sexist discussion, he feels that “women are in fact more flexible and adaptive to chaning environments, something that might have to do with intuition, left-brain asessment of reality, the capability to take multiple exits scenarios to a give problem, or a win/win attitude (vs. the more direct, forward, confrontational, fight-or-fight testosteronely driven masculine approach)”. He also wonders if it has to do with the maternal instinct that helps bring up their children. Ignacio concludes stating that reasons and skills don´t mater after all, for men and women are bound to go through this together!

On the other hand, Aranzazu Montes (HR & Organizational expert at Ericsson and MET Program Mentor) specially remembers that during the conference uncertainty was seen as a chance to face things from a different perspective and identify the opportunities in front of us. She certainly agrees that education is a key to foster the innovative and entrepreneurial spirit that we desire to develop so that it helps us through this changes; also with the importance to train our people and continously keep them updated in new technologies. Aranzazu reflects on the importance of talking about attitude when addressing this issues because very often we only discuss aptitude. She considers very helpful to count on people who are “aware of their own context, mature enought to make their own decisions and to be the drivers of their own professional career”.

Aranzazu wonders if we are cultivating that approach in the attitude of our people and youth because then they would be more prepared for working in environments with high uncertainty levels. Her reflextion finishes by expressing the aim to teach the “learning process” to people and trying to help them be conscious about their ownership of their reactions to changes to be able to fade away the feeling that only a few can do something to improve any given situation.

Por Natalia Martínez de Cestafe (Account Manager TradeDoubler y Mentee Programa MET)

El jueves pasado en el Programa
MET asistimos a una excelente conferencia sobre la innovación en tiempos de
crisis, y para ello tuvimos la suerte de contar con la presencia de
profesionales de diversos perfiles como son Joel Kurtzman, Presidente de
Kurtzman Group y ex-Editor de Harvard Business Review, Mark Spelman, Director
de Estrategia global de Accenture en USA, Vicente Moreno,
Presidente de Accenture España y dos miembros de la Fundación de la Innovación
Bankinter: Mónica Martínez, Directora General y
Carlos Mira, Vicepresidente.

Nos encontramos en una situación de crisis a nivel mundial y por lo tanto en un momento de gran incertidumbre. En los próximos años probablemente vayamos a asistir a un cambio en las relaciones económicas y en el sistema financiero mundial que no hemos conocido hasta ahora. Los ponentes estuvieron de acuerdo en la necesidad de aunar todos los esfuerzos en la creatividad, la investigación y especialmente la innovación para afrontar con éxito los retos que nos presenta la crisis.

El profesor Kurtzman presentó múltiples datos macro-económicos explicando la disminución de riqueza a nivel global, el descenso del comercio y cómo se presenta la situación actual en Estados Unidos. A pesar de que nos encontramos en una situación delicada y de que la crisis en el sistema financiero va a tardar en corregirse, Kurtzman es optimista y piensa que en breve empezaremos a ver una recuperación mundial: lenta en algunos países pero más veloz en otros. Uno de los motores de esta recuperación será sin duda la innovación: “la innovación triunfa sobre las circunstancias”, dijo el profesor. Considerando que el acceso a financiación es complicado en un país como España, Kurtzman destacó el caso de la energía solar y eólica en España: cómo el Estado mediante subsidios ha logrado que estemos en el segundo puesto en Europa.

“Las empresas deben invertir en tiempos difíciles”, así comenzó Spelman su discurso. Puesto que vivimos en un mundo global, de interdependencia, la incertidumbre se presenta en varios ángulos: político, económico, financiero y del entorno. En este contexto encontramos que las empresas emplean diferentes estrategias como son las de supervivencia, reposicionamiento o crecimiento (orgánico e inorgánico). En todas estas etapas, es de vital importancia la innovación. Es fundamental que los gobiernos sean conscientes y creen la oportunidad: unan a empresas grandes y pequeñas con personas del entorno académico (profesores y estudiantes) para desarrollar y fomentar la innovación (un buen ejemplo lo encontramos en Singapur). Pero, sobre todo, los líderes de la empresa actual tienen que comprender que en tiempos de crisis se deben controlar los costes sin olvidarse de que hay que invertir en innovación.

La participación en la ronda de preguntas fue muy alta y se plantearon diversas cuestiones sobre la actuación de los gobiernos con respecto a la innovación, dónde comenzar la búsqueda del talento, etc. Sin embargo, la pregunta que planteó Spelman es la que todos deberíamos hacernos en estos tiempos de crisis: “¿Qué clase de personas somos, qué nos motiva?” ¿Somos personas SEE (motivándonos la liquidez y los costes) o somos EYE (motivándonos la inversión y la innovación)? Parece que muchos predicamos ser EYE pero en la realidad actuamos como SEE. Los grandes líderes son quienes entienden la visión de SEE pero actúan como EYE.