What do you want me to tell you? Yes. That Spain always has been different. That claim Francoism tourism is still in force to disguise the same thing: the incongruities of a country that is capable of surprising you in some advances, but that hits the stick in the wheel of bureaucratic slowness.
It is at least the conclusion that one draws when reading the main topics of the D + I week to spin this weekly summary into digital. We can be the best and the worst at the same time.
Alejandro Poveda is the Country Manager of Outfund in Spain, the largest investor in e-commerce and startups in our country and the United Kingdom that recently acquired the Spanish Clicfunds. Alejandro made it clear on Tuesday: “It is hard to explain in the UK that it takes you two months to open a subsidiary here.” Because that’s how long it took them to create their own.
And in the same reflection with D + I he added the contrast, because he believes that “persistence” is one of the strengths of Spanish startups. Like the hardened Spanish Tercios, famous because they never gave up. It’s in our blood. But “we have to believe it”Poveda pointed out. According to the investor, we are light years away in attracting talent from France, the UK or even Portugal. We stumbled upon an outdated administration.
This is how those who compare us to invest see us. Resistance to change does not occur only within companies, it is also within the system. Country of contrasts. Let them tell any of the 100 Lanzadera startups that this week entered a new cycle of acceleration. The suffering of the entrepreneur in Spain is not paid.
Life begins little by little to return to normal. The Startup Olé de Salamanca has already had 400 speakers and many startups making contacts and inspiring the university city. We know surprising initiatives. That show how digitization sneaks through all the cracks like transforming gas. Gokoan is launched to by the applicants to the 30,000 positions of civil servants. Technology to make personalized training itineraries and choose the options with the best chance of success. Something different and monetizable investors will have seen when they have injected 1.2 million.
But for injection, stick with this name: UnusuAll is the Spanish video game startup that has caught the attention of the Asian giant Garena, platform that publishes the mythical Free Fire. He has raised three million euros to season “casual games for mobile phones” with “a little more salt and pepper”, as he explained to D + I David Picon, CEO of the company.
And for surprises, the conclusions of some studies. According to Harvard and Accenture, it is not that there is a lack of digital talent, it is that it is hidden. We do not know how to look for digital talent, classify it and match supply and demand. And the worst way for this selection is precisely the automated processes, the new digitized job search platforms because they do not see that hidden talent. According to the study, 54% of workers with digital potential in the US are invisible.
Where Spain is not seen is in the race for quantum computing. While the US and China engage in a mad race. D + I told them this week that, according to the consultancy IDC, around 7% of large companies worldwide already dedicate at least 17% of their annual technology budget to the quantum game. Little joke. There is the revolution of this revolution.
But the Spanish mark will be the seal of the largest nuclear fusion experiment in the world. The Cantabrian Ensa will begin to seal the vessels in March.
Consensus in the Senate
In the field of digital policy, on Thursday in the Senate it was again verified that in the field of science and innovation there is a certain State pact, a certain consensus to give continuity. Fortunately. Of course, your honorable Members must always be given a space for confrontation. That’s what the low adherence rates to the Covid radar platform served for. In that trifle overcome, the debate remained. As well.
In the international arena, the World Economic Forum indicated this week the way for artificial intelligence to be the vehicle to bring energy to the transition to renewables. “The AI can act as a smart layer in many applications and has the ability to identify patterns and insights in data, ‘learn’ lessons accurately and improve system performance over time, and predict and design potential outcomes for complex and multivariate situations, “according to the Head of Energy at the World Economic Forum, Roberto Bocca.
However, it is one of the sectors in which AI hardly enters projects. It is, but only in experimental phases. Could it be that the monopolistic handful of European power companies that have been setting historical highs in price for months? Couldn’t AI create a more realistic pricing system that doesn’t always benefit one party?…
I had to study that system years ago. If what they wanted was to make it complex so that it would last, they got it. But one is getting older this week to hear a spokesman for the electricity companies explaining that they are the harmed. They have to pay you a lot to go out and say that in public. With the AI indicated by the World Economic Forum, complexity would be transformed into efficiency.
Another of the week’s studies, Moody’s on agriculture, pointed along the same lines of sustainability. They indicate that robotics, sensors and Big Data represent a new opportunity for agriculture to take a new step again giant in its development and its approach to sustainability.
But connected machines are going to have to start with cybersecurity from its inception, from its manufacture. The European employers’ association for the digital sector, Digital Europe, this week asked the EU to start asking for cybersecurity systems in the manufacture of connected elements, in coffee machines, refrigerators, sensors, …
“There will be almost 30 billion connected devices by 2026 and ensuring their security will be the next big digital challenge. Without the proper standards, gadgets like cameras or coffee makers are vulnerable to hackers, which endangers Europeans and facilitates larger cyberattacks, “DigitalEurope CEO Cecilia Bonefeld-Dahl warned on Friday.
International gaps
At the international level, Rosa Jiménez advised us this week from the D + I writing in Miami, not to lose sight of Jeeves, “the fintech of international startups.” They have achieved 180 million in just 100 days with their project very focused on Latin America. “We want to support the startups that are born in several countries at the same time. Companies grow and expand at great speed. So far there have been no tailored financial services, capable of accompanying them in different phases with their needs depending on the moment ”, points out Dileep Thazhmon co-founder of Jeeves with Sherwin Ghandi.
It has been many decades since a phenomenon such as such transversal digitization arrived, capable of changing everything at the same time. From being a lever tool to move everyone at the same time. It is seen in initiatives like the one launched this week by Google and the IDB, the Inter-American Development Bank. A program to promote female entrepreneurship in Latam.
The IDB itself released this week a report on the development opportunities that 5G has for the countries of South America. 5G is an infrastructure that will equal us all in speed and in service delivery. An instant meeting point for the connected industry. Eradicating gaps such as gender.
Reading only the summary of all these advances of the week (and the many that we have left in the inkwell), it is not possible to stand still, with folded arms, resisting this tsunami of change in which we live.
From a country like Spain, a leader in high-speed internet and that is going to be one of the pioneers in the expansion of 5G … we cannot have barriers that stop us from creating subsidiaries that come to invest in the future for two months. We cannot sit idly by without denouncing these inconsistencies. That passivity, that slowness of our administration. We can’t wait for it to change from within. It is the companies and organizations of those affected that we have to put on the table plans for that to change and route itineraries. And press incessantly until they enter a path of normality.
In the same way that the European digital employers’ association has proposed this week to the EU that the interconnected elements already be manufactured with standards against cyberattacks, the CEOE and the startup groups should put on the negotiation table a plan for the digital reform of management with dates, milestones and measurable objectives. I sincerely believe that the political rulers themselves are willing that this pressure is produced with force to be able to face the enormous resistance to change that they are going to have. That it is not only the director of a British subsidiary who raises his voice, let’s start putting it as a headline claim in all forums … And why not?
** Rafa Navarro is editor of D + I and CEO of Inndux.
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