Press – Page 2 – Insight Foresight Institute

The European car industry has to catch up

Francisco Jariego, a member of the Innovation Council of IFI, and Totti Könnölä, CEO of Insight Foresight Institute (IFI), write in Cinco Días (one of the leading economic journals in Spain) about the transformation in the automotive industry driven by technological advances and the platform economy.

Smartphones have opened the possibility of sharing vehicles in a simple way. Uber and others have developed platforms that connect drivers and passengers, making it possible to find a driver or share a car with just a one click. These companies are pushing for a change in the patterns of private car use, which will have important consequences.

The electric vehicle is reaching the levels of autonomy and cost that make it competitive with the vehicles of internal combustion. Tesla has strongly encouraged the development of this type of vehicle with a huge investment in the production of electric batteries and a coordinated bet on the development of solar energy.

The autonomous vehicle begins to be accepted as a real possibility in a not too distant future. After years of investing in the technologies that will make a driverless vehicle possible, what began as a highly speculative bet from Google (a moonshot) is, since late 2016, a new business unit, Waymo, under the umbrella of Alphabet.

Read the full article in CincoDias in Spanish.

Internationalisation of Spanish Universities

Luis Delgado and Totti Könnölä (CEO of IFI) write in the EAIE Magazine on the role of international officers in Spanish universities. The analysis of job offers for international officers in higher education in Spain leads to the conclusion that their main goal is to support the recruitment of international students. They often work within recruitment teams, managing sales channels for specific regions to fulfil the university´s recruitment objectives. Nowadays, however, the concept of internationalisation of higher education should go far beyond student recruitment, the mere mobility of student, or the signing of international agreements. There is much more to a career in international higher education!

Delgado, Luis and Totti Könnölä. “Spain´s New International Officer.” EAIE Forum Member Magazine Winter 2016:08-09. Print.

image©EAIE

Innovation, purchases and employment

Juan Mulet, the member of IFI Innovation Council writes in Cinco Dias, one of the leading economic daily papers in Spain on how innovation, purchase and employment are, or should be, connected.

The 1987 Nobel Prize for Economics, Robert Solow, proved that the four fifths of the United States economic growth of the first half of the past century, were the consequence of having improved the way in which the production factors were combined. Back in the days it was called a technical change, nowadays we would call it “innovation in its broadest sense”, or, as the economist prefer “total productivity of the factors” (TPF). Only the remaining fifth of the mentioned growth, was attributable to the increase in the use of capital and labour. According to the OECD, between 1985 and 2010, the contribution to the (TPF) to the GDP growth between 1985 and 2010 was of 72% in Germany, of 63% in South Korea and a 52% in France. This percentage represented only a 13% in Spain. It is obvious that our economy hasn´t experience the improvement in the use of capital and labour, one of its main ways and opportunities to grow…

Read the full article in Spanish.

image©cincodias

Sharing Economy…… End of the game?

A lot of businesses within the digital economy are structured around the so called digital platforms. Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook are platforms, and up to a 70% of the new unicorns, with Uber leading them, as well. In USA and Asia the companies based in platforms represent a substantial part of the new digital economy. Surprisingly, Europe, contributes just a 4% in the total capitalization of the global platforms.

It is clear, that we should act in order for Europe to take advantage of what is still to come with the digital economy, which is a lot. That’s how the EC understands it, recently publishing two statements regarding the challenges and opportunities that the digital platforms represent for the European market; and also about the sharing economy.

Link to the full article in Spanish.

California for Europe

A reflection of the almost finished year: at the same time that the Cotec Foundation for Innovation celebrated its “the must” spring event, near Seseña a tyre bonfire was burning full flame. Those lost tyres could have become a business opportunity, an important service for our community and to the environment. Since the 70s the MIT professor Nichols Ashford, and more recently, Andrea Renda, from the CEPS European think tank, find evidence that an adequate regulation can create innovation, particularly to face the grand societal challenges. On the contrary, an inappropriate regulation can not only worsen the emerging opportunities, but prevent the potential innovators, professionals and entrepreneurs to innovate at all.

But as institutions are bearers of history, people are the wheels of the future. For example, the European Commission, has put into practice the so called innovation deals, using as a reference the previous Dutch experiences. It is refreshing to see an economic commissioner taking control over a directorate-general, usually ruled by the scientific logic. This combination of regulation and risk taking must be completed with a clear performance-oriented goal, because if something positive can be extracted from this crisis, is precisely the invitation for all of us, individuals and institutions, to rethink our previous stance, and go further than the established.

However, if all the innovations are novelties, not every novelty is innovation. In Spain, we embraced the United Kingdom model and the Business Innovation and Skills, but its application to the Economy hasn´t been able so far to achieve a new social agreement for innovation and science. The investment for our Spanish model of R&D+innovation will have another four years’ opportunity. No one will be able to say that two terms in office aren´t enough, and that they didn´t have the opportunity to think about the non-achieved objectives and how to get back on track. As Oscar Wilde said: “There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book, books are well written or badly written”…

Read to the full article in Spanish in Cinco Días