Innovation in times of innovation: New bearings for our firms

Innovation boosts productivity; as such it is a kingpin in the advance and growth of any country’s economy and companies. Spain, unfortunately, is lagging behind the world innovation leaders; this is a big concern as there will inevitably be a knock-on effect on its citizen’s welfare levels. In the latest “Global Innovation Index 2019” of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Spain’s innovation capacity ranks 29th in a total of 129 countries around the world.

The Association for Managerial Progress (Asociación para el Progreso de la Dirección; APD) has held a dialogue to take stock of Spain’s innovation situation and bring home to Spain’s business fabric the crucial role of innovation in achieving competitive advantages and moving Spain up the ranking. The dialogue was held between two top names in the innovation world: Luis Fernando Álvarez-Gascón and Bernardo Hernández. Álvarez-Gascon is General Manager of GMV’s Secure e-Solutions sector, Vice-President of the Spanish Association of Electronics, Digital Contents and ICT Companies (Asociación de Empresas de Electrónica, Tecnologías de la Información, Telecomunicaciones y Contenidos Digitales; AMETIC) and President of the Innovating Firms Forum (Foro de Empresas Innovadoras: FEI). The businessman Bernardo Hernández, currently CEO of Verse Technologies, boasts a long and successful technology track record; he has held executive posts in Yahoo’s Flickr, is the co-founder of idealista.com, President of Tuenti and has also been World Marketing Manager of Google Maps and Google Earth.

During the two executives’ “Inspiring Dialogue” Álvarez Gascón argued that it is crucial to link innovation to results, claiming that “innovation is knowledge at work”.

The GMV executive added that the digital transformation concerns not only the private but also the public sector. Governments are duty bound to come up with the right regulatory framework for innovation and also pursue innovation-favoring and-funding policies. They must also play an active part in knitting this transformation together at country level. Hernández took up his cue: “We’re asking that politicians at least don’t poke a spanner in the works of innovation”.

Hernández stressed the fact that some of Spanish companies’ innovation performance is good but they are still in the minority. There is a need for a change of mindset, setting sights not only on a good performance but on a higher sphere of true excellence.

GMV holds it as self-evident that innovation should be one of the company’s main driving forces; innovation has been hard-wired into the company from its very start and it plows back a large share of it profits into R&D. GMV’s own innovation commitment has made it a benchmark of growth and stability after 35 years of growth and adaptation. Álvarez-Gascón explained it in these words: "Talent is key: the capacity to learn, evolve, collaborate and pursue a long-term capital commitment by plowing back profits ".