More than 2,000 business executives have gathered this Wednesday in Barcelona at the V National Congress of the Association for Progress in management (APD), where its president, Rafael Miranda, has opened the day by explaining that the organization has chosen the Catalan city, because “it has always been dynamic, modern, plural, and open to the world”. And, now that the world has globalized, it has made us great, what we need to do is to unite us instead of separate us; better to be global than local, in allusion to the winds separatists in Catalonia.
Miranda has claimed for entrepreneurs and executives the role that is theirs in the civil society and has also asked that “the rulers don’t stand in our way, they do not generate uncertainty because policies that create uncertainty are the wrong policies”. The president of the APD refers to decisions that change today for tomorrow and to all those policies that promote unemployment, as the rise in taxes or the minimum wage professional, closures of power plants without reflection, and so on.
The congress, which will last until tomorrow, has the title ‘The human enterprise’. And on this first day, the participants have deployed a battery of presentations about new technologies.
Pilar Lopez, president of Microsoft in Spain, has spoken of the artificial intelligence generates competitive advantages. Advantages that translated in time can mean six or twelve months for a company over the competitors. The artificial intelligence is advancing faster than planned, and countries like China are investing 150,000 million dollars to be leaders in this field. Your program includes a plan to train professionals in artificial intelligence because there are not, said Lopez.
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Also, France will allocate 1,500 million euros until 2022 to this technology and has mobilized companies, such as Microsoft, which has announced a european plan of 30 million euros to train people in artificial intelligence. Germany has expressed also that it will invest 3,000 million in the development of this technology.
And, while, in Spain 65% of the firms say that they take steps to implement the artificial intelligence in their business (compared to 61% in Europe), but only 20% of them have deployed solutions, in comparison with 32% in Europe. “I worry about those 12 points of difference,” said the president of Microsoft. “We must not lose this train. We have the necessary capabilities in Spain to lead the study, and that our businesses are competitive”.
The importance of the data, the so-called oil or gold of the TWENTY-first century, have had a role in other papers. “The value of data is doubling in volume every two years,” stated Fernando Vives, president of Garrigues. “Data is a big opportunity for businesses”, according to Francisco Román, president of Vodafone, who said that in his company just if “we manage less than 1% of the information we have.” To be able to take full advantage of they need to provide infrastructure to companies, learn to deal with the complexity, scientists and engineers data, work the privacy and generate trust, has pointed out.
But, in the end, in this world so technological and globalized, “if we don’t abandon the complacency with inequality, and especially that which has to do with the companies, we will have an economy more closed,” he warned Antón Costas, professor of Applied Economics of the University of Barcelona. “The risk we have within our countries,” he said, because “inequality is a powerful solvent of the social contract of market economies. And today, that social contract is being destroyed by the inequality. Or are we aware as directors, or the alternative is the barbarism of the populisms”.