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Act.
04
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2017
Pablo González is the youngest CEO in Spain. At only 20 years of age he founded Pangea, a platform that promotes young talent around the world. "We are at an exciting stage of life, more global, interconnected, diverse and open than ever, but it is also a time in which the digital generation is well below the level of participation and transformation; we have no active role," he tells VIA Empresa, to put the birth of the project into context. Pangea was born out of all this frustration, out of González's need to "awaken the potential and connect the talent of young people in order to build a new world."
The way to do this is to attract young people with innate skills and capabilities. Every year they hold events around the world to unite this potential, talent that is linked to the experience and power of large companies so that they can adapt to the future. Because, as he showed in an Esade conference, the exponential nature of the change is the new key in the world: "Before, the economy, society and everything grew a linear way, now it is exponential and nothing can be predicted.
An unknown future
As the figures do not lie, the CEO lists some of them to help understand the magnitude of the situation: "In 2020 there will be 26 billion interconnected devices. It took 75 years for the telephone to reach 50 million users, while for Facebook it took 3.5 years, Google 88 days and Angry Birds 30 days." If that wasn't enough, he also points out that while 4G is being implanted, work on 5G is already underway and at a speed 100 times faster.
Where are we going? The answer is unknown, but González is sure that technology is the future. To begin with, because the countries with the greatest rate of robotic automation generate more work. "Japan is the clearest example," he says, and insists that the capacity to do things "better, cheaper, more efficiently and more safely will make things easier for us, rather than take work away from us." His argument is based on people's creative capacity.
A changing working paradigm
However, all of this has one consequence: "The battle of the generations. There has never been such a great difference between parents, children and grandparents as there is today. It is not a case that some are better or worse, it is that they are radically different." He thus proposes a paradigm in which the different generations work together, to make a better world.
Photo: Esade
On the professional level, the differences become visible when it comes to defining careers. "Until today the babyboomers built their profile according to the company and generation X were totally loyal to the profession, at least in their heads. However, generation Y works for organisations and not for executives, and generation Z is multitasking and capable of working at once for Telefònica, Endesa and Deloitte," he says. The challenge now is to make these large companies understand that this is where the future is going, towards workers who want to feel good about what they do, not the company they work in. And providing this freedom, he insists, "generates global knowledge that can be useful for all of the corporations."
To take advantage of the potential of the new generations, the change in organisations has to begin from within. Employees have to be able to share knowledge and challenges with other departments, to feel that their everyday work is not limited to their job. "Less than 5% of the native digital generation want to work in companies that previous generations considered a dream," a figure that González took from the New York Times to back his argument. And he gives the example of Kodak, which was a leader in the audiovisual market and worth 2.8 billion dollars and had 140,000 employees. "In 2012 it was worth less than 100 million dollars and had only 17,000 employees, the same year that Facebook bought Instagram, then worth a billion dollars and with 13 employees," he says.
The basis of the new market
"The market used to vary according to the supply and demand of the product. If something did not sell, it was taken away. That meant that there were star products you did not want great variety in because you knew it would not sell." It was a system, says the young CEO, that SteveJobs changed: "He created the iPod on which you could put as many songs as you liked, on a single device, so you did not have to limit the offer to the market. That created a new type of consumer." A new buyer that has turned the likes of Uber, Airbnb and EatWith into the companies of reference for the new generations. Why? Due to their capacity for "democratisingproduction" and due to the "crowd movement, which connects people's need to obtain something with the possibility of others to make it."
Another indicator that shows the changes in the market is distribution. Internet has become a basic channel and the most illustrative example is content platforms: "Millions of teachers, many of them free, allow any pupil from any part of the world to consume content and learn."
What came first, the chicken or the egg? In this case, it is difficult to know whether technology led to the digital generation or whether it is the digital generation that has driven the collaborative economy and this type of platform. Whatever the case, the CEO is sure that he is a part of a young generation that "when it wants to do something, there is no need to give them the means to do it but the end, and the collaborative economy provides this." That is why, he says, there are increasingly more startups set up by young people between 20 and 25 who want to fill the gaps in the market.
The way to do this is to attract young people with innate skills and capabilities. Every year they hold events around the world to unite this potential, talent that is linked to the experience and power of large companies so that they can adapt to the future. Because, as he showed in an Esade conference, the exponential nature of the change is the new key in the world: "Before, the economy, society and everything grew a linear way, now it is exponential and nothing can be predicted.
An unknown future
As the figures do not lie, the CEO lists some of them to help understand the magnitude of the situation: "In 2020 there will be 26 billion interconnected devices. It took 75 years for the telephone to reach 50 million users, while for Facebook it took 3.5 years, Google 88 days and Angry Birds 30 days." If that wasn't enough, he also points out that while 4G is being implanted, work on 5G is already underway and at a speed 100 times faster.
Where are we going? The answer is unknown, but González is sure that technology is the future. To begin with, because the countries with the greatest rate of robotic automation generate more work. "Japan is the clearest example," he says, and insists that the capacity to do things "better, cheaper, more efficiently and more safely will make things easier for us, rather than take work away from us." His argument is based on people's creative capacity.
A changing working paradigm
However, all of this has one consequence: "The battle of the generations. There has never been such a great difference between parents, children and grandparents as there is today. It is not a case that some are better or worse, it is that they are radically different." He thus proposes a paradigm in which the different generations work together, to make a better world.
Photo: Esade
On the professional level, the differences become visible when it comes to defining careers. "Until today the babyboomers built their profile according to the company and generation X were totally loyal to the profession, at least in their heads. However, generation Y works for organisations and not for executives, and generation Z is multitasking and capable of working at once for Telefònica, Endesa and Deloitte," he says. The challenge now is to make these large companies understand that this is where the future is going, towards workers who want to feel good about what they do, not the company they work in. And providing this freedom, he insists, "generates global knowledge that can be useful for all of the corporations."
To take advantage of the potential of the new generations, the change in organisations has to begin from within. Employees have to be able to share knowledge and challenges with other departments, to feel that their everyday work is not limited to their job. "Less than 5% of the native digital generation want to work in companies that previous generations considered a dream," a figure that González took from the New York Times to back his argument. And he gives the example of Kodak, which was a leader in the audiovisual market and worth 2.8 billion dollars and had 140,000 employees. "In 2012 it was worth less than 100 million dollars and had only 17,000 employees, the same year that Facebook bought Instagram, then worth a billion dollars and with 13 employees," he says.
The basis of the new market
"The market used to vary according to the supply and demand of the product. If something did not sell, it was taken away. That meant that there were star products you did not want great variety in because you knew it would not sell." It was a system, says the young CEO, that SteveJobs changed: "He created the iPod on which you could put as many songs as you liked, on a single device, so you did not have to limit the offer to the market. That created a new type of consumer." A new buyer that has turned the likes of Uber, Airbnb and EatWith into the companies of reference for the new generations. Why? Due to their capacity for "democratisingproduction" and due to the "crowd movement, which connects people's need to obtain something with the possibility of others to make it."
Another indicator that shows the changes in the market is distribution. Internet has become a basic channel and the most illustrative example is content platforms: "Millions of teachers, many of them free, allow any pupil from any part of the world to consume content and learn."
What came first, the chicken or the egg? In this case, it is difficult to know whether technology led to the digital generation or whether it is the digital generation that has driven the collaborative economy and this type of platform. Whatever the case, the CEO is sure that he is a part of a young generation that "when it wants to do something, there is no need to give them the means to do it but the end, and the collaborative economy provides this." That is why, he says, there are increasingly more startups set up by young people between 20 and 25 who want to fill the gaps in the market.