Alfons Cornella is a physicist and founder of Infonomia and Institute of Next. He has directed more than 100 innovation projects and has written more than 35 books. He is also a genius. At least that's the feeling I got after having breakfast with him at his house, among books and DIY tools. His office seems to be an old garage converted into a laboratory of ideas. His formula for youth is curiosity equal to happiness and success. His latest project is titled Edgers and delves into rebellion. Alfons Cornella recovers from a bad day to the rhythm of Bach and Maria del Mar Bonet and says he wants to return very soon to his corner of Lake Certascans in Pallars Sobirà. "I unlearn and then, I exist" is his great motto paraphrasing Cartesian philosophy. His is a very particular relationship with time because he has surely lived more in the future than in the present. Of course, always three times rebellious. May the force of curiosity and rebellion be with us!
--- "I am a free man, it has taken me my whole life to be one and I am still not sure if I really am," he writes on his X profile.
--- Freedom is being able to decide what you do and choose what you want to do. This is very difficult for economic reasons. There is a stage of life where you can only do what is expected until you can say no.
--- Learning to say no.
---There are many people who have to do things they don't agree with to the point of anguish. The English call ittrade-off which is a kind of balance and exchange. You have freedom in exchange for something else.--- Earning freedom.
--- This is the title of a book we wrote with Roser Batlle more than 10 years ago. It was a reflection aimed at teenagers about earning freedom. The aspiration is to do what you want at all times, and it's not easy because one doesn't even know what one wants to do.--- What does it have to do with time?
--- Throughout my professional life, I have not been in the present. Surely I have dared too much. I am not rich, nor will I ever be, because I have dared to do many things that perhaps I should not have done. That is the measure of success: reaching the end and having it been worth it.
"Throughout my professional life, I have not been in the present. Surely I have dared too much"
--- How to measure success?
--- A friend of mine often tells me that success is measured by what you can tell your grandchildren. Success is having dared. Life goes very fast, and there comes a moment when everything accelerates even more. You have to take advantage of the gift of time.
--- Have you taken advantage of it?
--- I haven't done what was expected; I've done what I believed I had to do. Like a book about curiosity. My satisfaction is not working day-to-day, but learning from the past and having one foot in the future. Pivoting in time has been very important.
--- Did you know as a child that you wanted to be a physicist?
--- I spent my entire childhood saying I wanted to be an architect, but there came a moment when I decided I wanted to study civil engineering. Finally, however, I did physics.
"A friend of mine often tells me that success is measured by what you can tell your grandchildren. Success is having dared and taking advantage of the gift of time"
---You also studied Information Sciences and Senior Business Management.
--- Yes, I wanted to learn how to use information as a strategic resource in the organization and turn it into an advantage. That's where the term Infonomia came from.
--- In 2000, you founded Infonomia as a source of ideas for restless and innovative people.
--- I remember one day I was at home, my children were already asleep, and I was wondering what I did for a living. I was at Esade surrounded by economists, and I looked up in the dictionary what Economy meant.
--- Oikos Nomos.
--- Oikos Nomos is the management of goods and I dedicate myself to information management. I was in the United States in the early 90s and returned here coinciding with the Olympics. I had a mission: to make people understand that information was very important for organizations. I was not wrong.
--- Let's go back to the roots: What is innovation?
--- To generate new or better value for someone. To find ideas, examples or technologies that yield results and that this result, at the same time, gives new ideas. To turn the wheel. Our model consists of ideas, value and results. The keyword is value. One must understand what the situation is and how it can be improved by changing the process, the technology or the essence of the product and service.
--- How can innovation avoid being an invention?
--- It is an invention if there is no acceptance or incorporation into the day-to-day of the organization. It is innovation when the market incorporates it.
"Innovation is very important to change things and make them a little better, but there is also a lot of theater. The exploitation-exploration dilemma is crucial. We need to innovate, but it is much easier not to do it"
--- What have you learned about knowledge over these last 25 years?
--- That innovation is very important and that there is a part of our process that consists of changing things and making them a little better each time. There is also a lot of innovation theater. Many people talk, but sometimes little happens. It is much easier to exploit a known business than to explore a new one.
--- Explore vs. Exploit.
--- The exploitation-exploration dilemma is crucial in innovation. Who is in charge of the company? Whoever exploits the business knows what needs to be done and how to generate results. But the future depends on exploration. The dialectic between exploitation and exploration is not balanced and, in fact, time and resources are the main problem of innovation. Innovating is not an automatic equation, you have to be lucky and that no one does anything similar in the market. We need to innovate, but it is much easier not to do it.
--- What is the opportunity cost?
--- It is not an exact science and you cannot determine what the result will be. The risk of changing is high. Everything will change drastically in the coming years thanks to simulation. It is the idea of the digital twin in which you make a replica in a machine -software- and apply the changes as if you were doing it in a real machine.
--- The mystery of simulation.
---The simulation of the industrial world will also exist, for example, in the service sector where there will be a base of human avatars to whom different questions about their consumption can be posed. Simulation totally reduces the risk of innovation. That said, no one is guaranteed that if they keep doing what they do, they will succeed in the future.
--- Past success does not predict future success.
--- PwC has a global study every year presented in Davos where it interviews thousands of CEOs and asks them if their company will be viable or not in the next 10 years. The percentage in recent years was 40% and now it is already 48%. Yes, 48% of CEOs say their company will not be viable in 10 years, and that means that executives realize that what works today does not necessarily have to work tomorrow. Thus, innovation will be an instrument of survival.
"48% of CEOs say their company will not be viable in 10 years. Innovation will be an instrument of survival"
--- Innovate to survive.
--- The big problem with innovation is the risk and the energy that must be put in to demonstrate its value and overcome people's natural blockage to any novelty. Consultant William Bridges showed that people don't fear change, but losing. That subtlety is fundamental. It is very important to convince people of the value of innovation.
--- "Innovation is in the eyes of people," says another consultant like Xavier Marcet.
--- The person must always be at the center, in the same way that innovation must be user-centered. Design thinking is based on this and on understanding a customer's journey with a product (customer journey).
--- Give me an example.
--- You go to the cinema, but what do you do before? You find a movie online or through the app, you decide how much time you have to watch the movie and if it's worth going there, you think if it's better to watch Netflix from home, buy or not buy the ticket... We have spent more time convincing other humans than convincing ourselves about the value of innovation. Psychology is fundamental.
--- Why?
--- Because innovation is not about technology or processes, but about harmonies between people in a given situation. Innovation is about moments and situations. This is the main lesson I have learned.
"Innovation is not about technology or processes, but about harmonies between people in a given situation. Innovation is about moments"
--- You have worked a lot in the private sector. Is it easy to innovate from public administration?
--- It depends a lot on each organization or each person. I'll give you an example: there is a Trinidad Institute that is one of the ten best vocational training centers in Spain and is much more innovative than some subsidized schools. However, conditions in an Administration are difficult because there are no incentives for change and results are not measured.
--- The famous evaluation of public policies.
---The measure of a result in a private company is to invoice or close. The Administration must provide service to citizens, but how does it measure results? Will it provide a different service or close? It is the contrast between public vocation and wanting to be of maximum utility in circumstances where it is not easy to innovate.
--- What else doesn't work?
--- There are many things in the political system that don't work. One thing is politics and a very different thing is public administration, which should have an even more relevant role in setting long-term discretions. There is a lot of work to be done in politics.
--- Any model to follow?
--- I wouldn't applaud the Chinese model in many ways, but they have managed to create progress and lift hundreds of millions of people out of extreme poverty in a few decades. Long-term planning mobilizes a large amount of resources and makes things happen. A public administration that innovates? Yes, the Chinese one.
--- What is progress?
--- That's the first thing we need to rethink. The concept of progress has been built since the 19th century based on growth, knowledge, freedom, and different basic concepts that are no longer applicable today. That is, we cannot grow just for the sake of it because the planet has limits, and in fact, now we need to talk more about balance than growth. Knowledge radically changes the future.
"Freedom or dignity? We must rethink progress. Knowledge radically changes the future"
--- What do we know about the future?
--- There are machines that will start doing things that until now only humans did. The competition will be brutal and the scientific distance between countries will be enormous. Everything will become more and more sophisticated. The word freedom will enter into crisis in the coming years in contrast to dignity.
--- Free dignity or dignified freedom?
--- Will people want freedom or dignity? In other words, will they want freedom without dignity or dignity without freedom? All this sounds very bad, but I am convinced that it will be part of the redefinition of progress in the long term. Science, technology, and public-private collaboration must also be taken into account. All resources must be put in to move forward.
--- What kind of resources?
--- The public and private sectors must be aligned because science will be much more expensive. If you don't have science, you will have to import everything and you will play no role. If you want to be a country with first-class services, you must have a first-class economy, and this requires top-level science and technology thanks to public-private collaboration. We have not yet reached this discourse. The essential thing is to know what economic and social model we want for 2050 to then be able to guarantee a good quality of life for citizens.
--- It is very difficult to think that the current party system can have a long-term political vision.
--- Because of politicians, but not because of politics. It depends on the quality and the will for public service when it comes to reaching agreements for education and health. We are frankly in a bad situation if short-term partisanship dominates us instead of a Western market economy model based on the long-term progress of people and ideas.
--- How is this model built?
--- It must be built not on the imposition of a future, as the Chinese model would be, but on the debate of long-term progress. However, here we debate mostly about the short term. For example, what do we do with the diversity of origin of the population by 2050? We have a structural difficulty in combining the long term with the short-term drive of companies because no one thinks about it...
--- Your latest project is Edgers. What is rebelliousness?
--- Rebelliousness is considering that things don't have to be the way they are just because. It is a position of questioning regarding what is taken for granted. Call to question. It is asking if this really has to be this way or if things can be done differently. It is questioning the status quo.
"Rebelliousness is a positive force that questions the status quo through the future"
--- "Defining new rules of the game."
--- The problem with rebelliousness is that there is someone who will surely be bothered by it because it questions the status quo.
--- Power struggle.
--- The current social model does not adapt to new circumstances. We have hierarchically managed companies, and younger generations want to operate differently. Technology allows for much greater agility. Rebellion is an extraordinarily positive force that allows us to question what no longer works.
--- And what works?
--- The future cannot be solved with the tools of the past. The German researcher Otto Scharmer explains it very clearly. We must look for the solution in the future, and for that, we need rebels who say what they would like a political system to be like in 20 years.
--- Strategic foresight.
--- Look for the solution in the future and bring it backward. We must be very attentive to the rebels who are already making changes and proposing very different things. It is fundamental to understand rebellion in terms of the future. We need millions of rebels.
--- One of Jorge Wagensberg's great aphorisms goes like this: "Changing the answer is evolution, changing the question is revolution."
--- This is a very accurate aphorism by Wagensberg. It's about changing the questions. In the Edgers documentary, we interviewed a Mexican businessman who says that entrepreneurs already have new ways of responding, but what they don't yet know is that the questions have already changed.
"Tomorrow's leaders are not defined by the individual, but by the team. A leader must have rebels but also audacious people capable of turning rebellion into a reality"
--- New questions and old answers.
---We must know what today's questions are. Rebels ask questions that can help us a lot in transitioning to a new model of society.
--- What should tomorrow's leader be like?
--- Tomorrow's leaders are not defined by the individual, but by the team. Leadership is in the team, and we propose that they have balance. That is, a leader must have rebels but also audacious people capable of turning rebellion into a reality. We are talking about very decisive people who make things happen and people very open to technology.
--- Without technology...
--- Without technology, there is nothing. Technology is not an anecdote; it is absolutely transcendental. Artificial intelligence proves this. Tomorrow's leaders have a team capable of connecting, forming ecosystems, and generating alliances with organizations.
--- The power of alliances.
--- Knowing how to make the most of talent. A good team knows that it has to adapt quickly to its surroundings and that it can design its future much beyond mere adaptation. First, I adapt because the market demands it, and then, I build my future thanks to the simulation trajectories of tons of data. The decision then is not adaptive, but definitive of where I want to go.
--- Camins is the title of the mythical song by Sopa de Cabra.
--- It is a transcendental change in the history of humanity. It turns out that now I don't care where the wind comes from because I want to go there. Science and technology help me to determine, decide, and draw my future based on all the data I have around me and that today I can't even imagine. To understand each other, the future I decide is what I have designed.
"Governing is impossible if you don't manage the entire data flow. How can we have the arrogance to say that we are a civilization when there are so many wars and so much misery? My dream is that we enter history"
--- How can data help us?
--- We need an AI government that determines what to do based on data. Governing is impossible if you don't manage the entire data flow. How can we have the arrogance to say that we are a civilization when there are so many wars and so much misery? My dream is that we enter history. It's impossible that we are alone in the universe, but surely aliens won't contact us until we enter history. That is, until we develop into what we can truly be. With the current misery, it's not attractive to come here.
--- What impact can AI have on our lives?
--- What we have now has nothing to do with what we will have. Chat GPT still has some errors and hallucinations. What is important is the potential for augmentation of the mutual capacity of humans and machines.
--- Making humans grow by making machines grow?
--- As a human, you will be able to do your job better with AI tools, and at the same time, this will allow AI to be better. The future is exponential. For example, a doctor will be able to diagnose lung cancer much better thanks to artificial intelligence.
--- What is the horizon?
--- It is totally uncertain, but what future do we want there to be? Imagine there is a Faculty of Medicine that decides to train doctors with an AI assistant. This is a very powerful transformation tool.
--- Is Chat GPT already designing a new future?
---GPT stands for general purpose technology, like electricity or steam in their time. AI will be the same because it will be applied in multiple things and the big challenge is how we use it to make our work and our world better. Will we do other jobs? Surely. Will things stop being done? Surely and possibly better. The big challenge is to make the impact on humanity as a whole positive.
--- Consciousness and ethics in technology. Are we all simulating the future we want or have some already written it for us?
--- It is very difficult to control the egos at play. There is a global competition to achieve the first universal artificial intelligence tool and thus appear in history books. All this must be regulated, but it will be very difficult to do so. For example, Sora will change the work of screenwriters and actors, although the population may determine that they do not want this.
"I hope that before 2049 there will be a human revolt. We will have failed if machines have psychology. Humans may not exist in 100 years"
--- Sounds like an Orwell and Huxley dystopia.
--- I hope that before 2049 there will be a human revolt. It sounds like science fiction, but I am convinced that there will be tension and conflict between a part of the population that becomes precarious and another that finds it very profitable to use AI. Not even universal basic income will be able to solve that problem.
--- Let's go back to dignity and freedom.
--- Exactly. Is economic dignity enough to be human? I don't think so. We cannot imagine the horizons of social change in the coming decades as a consequence of this technological revolution that was not experienced even with the industrial revolution.
---Let's go back to the revolt.
--- I find it hard to understand the word conflict with a machine. Humans are complicated and we will have failed if machines are also complicated and have psychology. In 100 years we may not even exist. The pandemic that has occurred may be a joke compared to other extremely lethal pandemics to which we may not be able to respond.
--- The force of nature.
---The scientist Vaclav Smil is one of Bill Gates' favorite authors and says that Yuval Harari does not take into account the force of nature that humans cannot control. Our existence can end with an asteroid. We must work on transformation in the coming decades because in 100 years we don't know what can happen. For example, we can help improve the quality of life for older people with robots that keep them company.
"We must incorporate the future into our discourse and our language"
--What is important for the future?
--- We must incorporate the future into our discourse and our language. It seems that talking about the future is science fiction, but it is not, the future must be a medium and long-term reflection. The businesswoman Cecilia Tham says that "the future is not a luxury."
--- Very good: "The future is not a luxury."
--- The future tense is very important for politicians and also for businessmen. What will happen? The future is not just a circumstance that we cannot control, and we can do things to make it even better. Like climate change, for example. We have technology to improve it, another thing is whether we want to do it. Science allows us to predict what will happen and it is a transcendental change in the history of humanity that allows us to make predictions.
--- What else does the future hold for us?
--- Will the asteroid arrive? Perhaps yes, but the future should become part of our lives the moment it can be predicted and acted upon accordingly. We talk little about the future and we should talk about it more and more.
"That Barcelona exists is good for the world and we should build a narrative to explain it. The city must send challenges to the world and bring the best people from the world to talk about it"
--- How do you see Barcelona's present?
--- Barcelona does not realize what role it has in the world. Everyone knows our city and this is amazing. Barcelona sounds a lot and has a fundamental narrative asset that must be renewed. What is the city and what does it represent in the world?
--- What is Barcelona and what does it represent in the world?
--- I was in a working group and I commented on the following idea: That Barcelona exists is good for the world and we should know how to explain it. Make it a reality. Barcelona is an attractive city for thousands of young people who come to work, it is an environment where many things can be created, like the more than 2,500 startups that exist. It's fantastic if young people leave and then come back. The city's narrative must be ambitious, daring, and assertive.
---And three times rebellious, like the poet Maria-Mercè Marçal.
---And rebellious! The city must send challenges to the world and bring the best people from the world to talk about it. I'm not talking about remaking the forum of cultures, but about generating the questions and conditions to talk with the great experts. Barcelona has an unbeatable situation to attract punctual or permanent talent.
--- -Let's do it, right?
--- The city's problem is that neither the public sector nor the private sector provides the resources for Barcelona to be the capital of a world narrative. If you talk to people who do interesting things here, they will tell you that there isn't enough money. What is done here with one million euros, in Boston, 100 are allocated. The lack of resources to reinvent the world is a drama.
--- The Barcelona narrative must go beyond the 1992 Olympic Games.
---Startups are a good example. The narrative of the Olympic Games is very good, but it should be replaced by a new narrative that consists of asking the questions to reinvent the world. We are very lucky that Barcelona is attractive. And yes, the world is better because Barcelona exists.
----We have to believe in it more and make our beloved city shine.
--- There are things that harm us a lot, like the limited ability to speak languages. More things would happen if the people who have to define the future of Barcelona also spoke English. In other words, our level of external projection is weakened by the poor command of languages. There are very good people who cannot go to London or New York to explain what they do, but if you think about it, brutal projects in quantum computing are being done just 100 meters from home.
--- Quantum computing in Barceloneta?
--- A few years ago I made a proposal at Santa Mònica to show the world that Barcelona is not just Gaudí. The idea was for tourists to see that this city also has companies, art, and innovation. That it is a living city and to use Santa Mònica to explain what we do and how we respond to the world from Barcelona. The idea was for Santa Mònica to be the interchange between the city and the world.
--- Barcelona is powerful, Peret sang.
--- It is the work of the city's powerful narrative to leverage that natural attraction and turn it into an engine of the world, which is perfectly possible. We need to promote people who have this mindset and allocate many resources. There is a private sector that has a lot of money and doesn't know where to put it beyond art foundations.
"We need to change the Administration model and orient it towards the future"
--- Do we lack more and better public-private collaboration?
--- We need to change the Administration model and orient it towards the future. We are doing poorly if the Administration only manages the present and does not have a bold vector towards the future. There must also be a tax system that helps. If civil society also wants to incorporate it, welcome. The key would be for the public sector to put in as many or more resources than the private sector.
--- What role should civil society play in the Barcelona of the future?
---There is a problem that the city's leading figures want to be invisible. People who make money with technological initiatives could reinvest it here. The model should be like the American one: you make money and you reinvest it in initiatives for the city. For now, here there are four who have made money, many have lost, and many will win.
--- Give me some more examples.
--- Former Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold has put a lot of money into a company called Intellectual Ventures that invests in many crazy scientists around the world. BlackBerry founder Mike Lazaridis promoted the Perimeter Institute in cutting-edge physics. ICFO is the only somewhat similar exception we have here. Andreu Mas-Colell has been key in the history of Catalonia because he thought we could do first-class things from here, and then ICREA and a structure of top-tier centers and publications emerged. He believed. We need rebels.
--- The previous interviewee Ferran Ramon Cortés asks you the following questions:
- Young people are leaving... Are we creating the right ecosystem to retain and stimulate talent?
--- No, and it's crucial to do so. We must allocate resources, but also change tax policies. Some experts have told me that returning here is fiscal suicide because all the wealth they've accumulated would evaporate. There are obvious reasons related to the tax structure that are as important as the reasons for returning itself.
"Is Catalonia prepared to pay a top-level scientist a million euros a year in salary? When we talked about Messi, we didn't even consider it."
--- Incentives to come home?
--- Neither incentives nor guarantees. One day I heard someone say: Is Catalonia prepared to pay a top-level scientist a million euros a year in salary? When we talked about Messi, we didn't even consider it. If you pay a scientist a million euros, they will secure projects worth 20 and 30 million euros just from European funds. Imagine. We must understand that talent needs to be paid very well and given the conditions to prosper. For example, the Max Planck Society in Germany creates institutes around top-level scientists.
--- Thinking in terms of investment, not cost.
--- Do we believe in the future? If the answer is yes, then we need intelligent people. Some analyses say that Barcelona will need 150,000 highly qualified people in the next 20 years if we want to maintain our standard of living. There is no future for the city or the country without highly educated and high-level people. It is absolutely strategic to attract and retain highly qualified talent and for science and industry to combine to produce first-class products and services.
"There is no health without curiosity. The writer José Saramago used to say that "you grow old when you stop being curious." Curiosity is a good reason to get up every morning."
- Is curiosity a pending subject in educational programs? How can we keep it alive throughout our professional lives?
--- I have dedicated myself a lot to curiosity because it is one of the great future topics due to the emergence of AI. We must make the most of imagination and curiosity is absolutely strategic for the future of education. Answers have little value because simulations or machines will be able to give them, but the most important thing are the questions that humans now ask. There is no health without curiosity. The writer José Saramago used to say that "you grow old when you stop being curious".
--- That's what they say about older people...
--- A person degenerates when they stop being curious and are no longer interested in anything. The brain and body gradually shut down. Staying curious and restless is an important force for your mental health. Curiosity is a good reason to get up every morning.
SEVEN LIVES
- Referent: Ramon Folch, for his seriousness and rebelliousness
- Book: Hyperion, by Holderlin
- Film: The Magic Flute, directed by Ingmar Bergman
- Song: ZerflieBe, Mein Herze by Bach and Pi de Formentor by Maria del Mar Bonet
- Favorite spot: The stone of the Certascan pond in Pallars Sobirà
- Life motto: I unlearn and then, I exist. The worst thing one can do is take their knowledge for granted. You have to be willing to deprogram your brain.
- Dream: To enter history and stop being in prehistory. This is the dream of a good Japanese friend. History will begin when there are no longer conflicts, each person can develop, and we can improve collectively.