Almudena Rodríguez Tarodo's speech for the Business Education in 2025 – Corporate Panel, presented in the 2011 EFMD Annual Conference.

1. 2011 EFMD Annual Conference Business Education in 2025
Almudena Rodríguez Tarodo speech
Good Morning Ladies and Gentlemen:
We are here at the EFMD Annual Conference to face the inspiring challenge of how
Management Education in 2025 will be. Now Are we able to see that far in the future? Some of
the major companies that today occupy leading positions of Fortune 500 did not even exist 25
years ago. Words, which we have used repeatedly this morning, such as, e-mail or text
message were not invented when we went to University. Day to day essentials (enseñas
Blackberry) weren’t even dreamed of some years ago. In such a scenario, is it foolish imagine
what the world will be like in 2025?
No, it is not. Being ahead of tomorrow has never been such a difficult or exciting task, nor as
necessary. Maybe it's time to take out that Jules Verne we read when we were younger and
who we all have within us. Because we are facing not a bold intellectual exercise, but one of
sheer survival. We leading companies are obliged to anticipate the future or we will definitely be
left behind. The ability to draw possible scenarios and to know how to act on them is now a
crucial requirement. It's time to close our eyes and visualize the twenty-first century.
However in order that this exercise is not a fantasy candidate for a Hollywood Oscar for the
likes of Avatar or Minority Report but a prospective effort, we need to know in depth the three
major trends that are shaping the future. I am referring to the demographic changes,
technological revolution and economic globalization. The implications of these three trends will
shape the future. They will affect the deepest aspects of our organizations as well as the last
details of our lives. Let us imagine the EFMD Annual Conference of 2025 for a moment. We're
all here again, only that we are a little older and hopefully wiser. We will talk about how
management education will be in 2050. We might not have this bottle of water in front of us.
Maybe we are drinking an anti-ox broccoli juice and Brussels sprouts grown in an organic
garden nearby. Those of you who have come from great distances may do so via supersonic
jets that go beyond the Earth's atmosphere. Maybe we will not need simultaneous translations,
thanks to the nanoprocessors in our ears that will translate any language into our language. Or
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2. maybe we might not even have to come to the European capital and rather have the meeting
through advanced telepresence and virtual reality systems.
Whatever it is we will be slightly different to this fairly homogeneous group of today. Socio-
demographic changes will bring about an older population, with generally slower growth. There
will be a new balance in the composition of the workforce by age, gender, and cultural and
ethnic background. As a result we will have more diverse organizations. If we close our eyes we
will see that our teams will be like the United Nations General Assembly on a small scale. There
will be more women, a greater mix of youth and seniors and a greater diversity of races. Digital
natives will live together with people like us who grew up with a TV without a remote control.
In the technological aspect new advances in information technology, biotechnology and
emerging fields such as nanotechnology will be made. A new generation of microprocessors will
enable dramatic improvements in areas such as artificial intelligence and robotics. Everything
indicates that the image of the friendly robot R2D2 of Star Wars will come true although perhaps
it is no more than a microcircuit in your mobile phone. Changes will be accelerated; synergies
between different technologies and disciplines will be created which will affect research and
development, production processes and the nature of the processes and services. We will
definitely leave the industrial era behind in order to advance in the society of knowledge.
Information will be the cornerstone and what fire, the wheel and bronze were once in the past.
We are moving towards the bites economy and are increasingly welcoming customised goods
and services. If the twentieth century was the century of mass production the twenty-first will be
that of customisation. We will choose all our car components and we will have mortgages fully à
la carte.
The reach of economic globalization will indeed be virtually global. The appearance of emerging
Asian-Pacific economies will mean a decrease in importance of the influence of the Euro-
Atlantic axis in the global economy. Yes, we will take more planes to China and India.
Globalization will affect all industries and segments of the labour force that had remained
relatively isolated in the past. The world economy will be marked by increased trade in goods,
services and movement of people; also because of the disappearance of borders and
schedules. We are entering the world of being operational 24 hours a day, 365 days a year; we
are entering the non-stop society.
In the area of organisations, we are in a transition from an administrative model to one of
products to be able to reach a fully customer-driven future. The idea that the customer is king
has never been so true. Companies will be required to function in a global economy and a
network society, in collaborative environments, virtual and real worlds and act in more complex
scenarios that operate at different speeds. The identification and management of relevant
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3. knowledge will mark the dividing line between successful companies and those that will not
survive the drive of modern times. One of the major challenges to stay ahead is to combine
efficiency in a context of cost containment with creativity and agility.
The amount and speed of change is causing a widespread perception that the atmosphere is
uncertain, volatile and complex. It's like a fast-paced movie; we having a hard time following the
plot. The new rules of the game outline a very different type of society and business culture
from what we have known so far. As Professor Manuel Castells points out, the configuration of
the future society will be the network society. Knowledge becomes the raw material of the
twenty-first century world and connections to the levers that move it.
And what will those people who manage the levers be like? What will the leaders of tomorrow
be like and how will we prepare them to function in such complex scenarios? Once we have
outlined the world in the coming decades, we have to make a similar effort to imagine its
protagonists.
In 2025 the so-called digital generation or generation D, those born between 1995 and 2002 or
so, will be the majority of the students in business schools. The will also be a key segment in
our corporate training. We face the challenge of providing specialised training to the first digital
generation. Do we you know them? Just take a look at our children, our nephews. It is the
generation that plays with the Wii and Nintendo even though they are not studying with
electronic books yet. They rather kill Piglets with Angry Birds than read the adventures of Tintin.
They follow YouTube more than television. They spend their weekly allowance in Apps for the
3G mobile they received as a birthday present. If they want to talk to their friends after school
they do not pick up the phone, they connect to the network. It is the generation of networks,
more collaborative, and with easy access to multimedia. Basic concepts such as privacy,
intimacy and ownership have a very different meaning for them than for their parents. And while
we train them we will have to meet the needs of the previous analogue generation, whose
working life will be lengthened as the quality of life in old age improves; an exciting mix.
We will have these kids who nowadays spend hours in front of screens in our classrooms in
2025. And we will want to turn them into good professionals valuable to our organisations and
leaders of tomorrow. But if childhood today bears little resemblance to ours, the kind of
leadership of the twenty-first century has little to do with the profile of those who are in leading
positions today.
We already have some clues of what the leader of the future will be like. This leader will be a
much more flexible professional with expertise in network culture. He or she will have a truly
international profile and a genuine glocal mentality. His or her challenge will be to solve
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4. dilemmas in a complex and highly competitive environment, to be able to detect and use
relevant knowledge. He or she will be a more collaborative and communicative leader with his
or her teams and encourage creativity. This leader will value feedback and feed-forward more.
He or she must adapt to a more transparent environment and interact in a more horizontal
organization. He or she will be a sustainable leader, more aware of his or her responsible
contribution to society and the planet.
Now that we've taken a look at the future and its players, it's time to ask what challenges does
this scenario pose to management education professionals. What will be the most valued skills
in a global complex and competivite context? . What kind of knowledge and skills will be key in
2025? What will be the best way to transmit them? How will the training professionals have to
evolve so that process be successful?
We are all already aware that the technological revolution and network culture will profoundly
affect the way we teach. We have already begun the transition to so-called high-tech education,
which forces us to incorporate innovations rapidly. I once heard from a young student that a
book is nothing more than "ink on a piece of dead tree." We live in a society of screens. We will
move on from hypertext to hypermedia, from the 2.0 web to the semantic web, from the
classroom to virtual reality systems applied to learning. Simulators will no longer be only for
pilots or combat units, they will also help our professionals come into contact with real
situations. In the near future it is more than likely that we will have artificial intelligence systems
for tutorial support. Audiovisual language and image will be essential in teaching, in learning
materials. Concepts such as Apps, mobile education, pop-up and snack culture will be
commonly used in the training of the next few years. The influence of entertainment will
definitely have an impact on education as it has already had on the field of information. If
nowadays we talk about info-entertainment in the future we will talk about "edu-entertainment."
The training will be more fun and informal learning contexts will gain ground.
Given the pace of technological advance it is impossible to discern the formats and tools of the
future. What is clear is that the interaction between the network culture, the technological impact
and the concept of Life Long Learning will determine the future. The multimodal teaching or
blended learning is the trend in the coming years. Formats will be combined and training will be
more active and "learn by doing." Face-to face education will not disappear but it will be
substantially renovated. The old master class will be replaced by mentoring, which involves a
figure with experience and critieria that will accompany us in the key processes of our
professional life. We are entering an environment where everyone will have to be more
generous and transparent in sharing knowledge and experiences.
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5. We can share experiences and select information. Paradoxically, information overload may be
one of the greatest dangers of future training. In Business Administration alone five new books
will be published daily. It is estimated that it took humanity 1750 years to double its knowledge
for the first time. Now it duplicates every 73 days. Distinguishing where the relevant knowledge
is will be crucial for the organization in order to be competitive in the future. We run the risk of
having hyper-informed but poorly educated generations. Our challenge will be to promote
critical and relational thinking, give our professional skills to put knowledge into context and
make connections between key areas.
We leave aside memory-based learning. We are moving from a model based on "stocking"
data, theories and models to one focused more on skills, attitudes and values. New areas of
expertise are incorporated into academic programs. The interdisciplinary approach is gaining
ground. Issues such as sustainability, intercultural relations, social commitment and glocality are
becoming part of the curricula.
Corporate units for training and development are gaining ground in a context where knowledge
is king and the idea of "learn by doing" and internal talent become more valuable. In this
framework we become allies of senior management and talent strategists. Our mission will be to
help the CEO identify the type of talent necessary to allow the organization to grow. Our mission
will not only be to identify it, but to strategically plan these key profiles and develop the skills
and knowledge required for these positions. To do this we need to know the business perfectly
and the keys to learning. Top management will particularly value our flexibility and our
immediate response in providing the organization with the right talent at the right time. The
ability to anticipate future talent needs and the skill to develop them is the key to our survival.
Our ally in this challenge will be schools which know how to combine academic excellence with
a future vision.
And perhaps the first talent that we have to think of in order to serve our organisation is our
training and development teams. It is time to reinvent ourselves. The success of our mission
depends on our ability to have versatile, global, diverse, multidisciplinary, innovative and a very
customer-oriented teams. Among our instructors we will find experts onstrategy and
hypermedia, nutritionists, top-performance coaches, humanists, actors and so on... In our
teams, customer-focus and knowledge management are key skills for success in this
environment.
In my brief contribution to this panel in this tomorrow that is so near and exciting. We have
already sown the seeds of the future in the Santander Group and we are watching them grow.
With the strong leadership of our president and CEO, our talent management model is a
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6. strategic priority in the organization. It is a model that considers the future trends I have just
explained. It integrates the continuous development of global and responsible leaders, talent
planning and its training and international mobility as crucial. Our training has already made the
transition to a high tech model and in this sphere we stand at the forefront of corporate training.
A fully integrated model in the Santander culture, a culture with strong values which has allowed
us to reach a leading position. We are confident that our vision and the foresight that we have
the in key areas in order to be successful in the knowledge society will enable us to keep this
leading position not only in 2025 but much further beyond.
Very few generations have had the historic opportunity to experience a change of era. We are
going to do this as protagonists of a key sector in order to train leaders who will drive the
change and the world of tomorrow. In this exciting journey into the future perhaps the wisdom of
Aristotle, the integrity of Cicero, the imagination of Jules Verne, the audacity of Tintin and the
ability to dream of Don Quixote will help us.
Thank you very much.
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