Over the past year, I've covered a lot of ground. I've travelled across Catalonia, visited different parts of Spain, and had the chance to speak with young entrepreneurs from very different walks of life. Some are continuing family businesses, others are starting from scratch; some run companies with dozens of employees, and others are still trying to get their first project off the ground. I've also had the opportunity to share many conversations with entrepreneurs who have been in business for decades, universities, associations and institutions.
After all this travelling, one feeling has become increasingly clear to me: there's a generation that wants to participate more and that, in some way, is starting to put its hand up.
For many years we've heard that young people are the future, the succession, the next generation. It's surely said with the best of intentions, but there's something contradictory about it when many of these young people are already starting companies, hiring staff, seeking funding, making decisions or taking their projects beyond our borders. We're not waiting for our turn to do business, because, quite simply, we're already doing it.
"Talking about generational handover shouldn't mean sidelining those who have held positions of responsibility for years"
I think it's time to take a further step and get involved in the spaces where business, economy and society are discussed too. And for that to happen, there needs to be willingness on both sides.
Talking about generational handover shouldn't mean sidelining those who have held positions of responsibility for years. It would be absurd to give up all that experience. One of the things I value most about the conversations I've had with entrepreneurs from other generations is precisely this: hearing how they handled moments we never went through, what mistakes they made, and how they managed to build companies that, in some cases, have survived for decades.
We have a great deal to learn from them, and I think a fundamental part of the handover lies precisely in making sure that knowledge gets passed on. But for that transmission to happen, two generations have to meet: one willing to share what it has learned, and another willing to listen and, when the time comes, take on responsibilities.
This last point matters, because we often talk a great deal about the need to give young people opportunities and rather less about our own responsibility to make the most of them.
It's easy to ask for a seat at the table. Being ready to take it is another matter.
Getting involved means dedicating time to issues that often don't offer any immediate return for our company. It means attending meetings, getting involved with associations, engaging with universities, listening to views different from our own, and dedicating part of our time to collective projects. When you're trying to get a company off the ground, especially in the early years, it isn't always easy to find that time.
But I'm becoming increasingly convinced that this, too, is part of our responsibility as entrepreneurs.
For too long, perhaps, we've understood a business as something that ends at our office door. But anyone who has tried to build one knows it depends constantly on what happens outside it: on the training and talent we're able to develop, on infrastructure, on institutions, on access to financing, on public services and, ultimately, on the economic and social environment in which we operate.
If we want to be part of that environment, we'll also need to get involved.
"If we want there to be a handover, at some point we'll have to hand over real responsibilities and also accept new ways of understanding things"
Business organisations like ours have an important responsibility here. It wouldn't make much sense to keep talking about generational handover if we're then unable to bring it into our own structures. And I don't think it's enough, either, to include young people simply so we can say they're present. If we want there to be a handover, at some point we'll have to hand over real responsibilities and also accept new ways of understanding things.
It's something we've been trying to do at AIJEC. Over the past year we've been out and about a great deal, probably more than we imagined when we started. We've travelled the region, gone into universities, strengthened relationships with other business organisations, and come across projects that are all very different from one another.
This journey has also helped me dismantle some clichés about what we mean by a young entrepreneur. There's no single profile. There are tech startups and family businesses, sole traders and companies with significant structures already in place, projects that have secured major funding rounds and others built euro by euro from their founders' savings. There's also the shopkeeper who rolls up the shutters every morning and who will probably never be associated with the word "entrepreneurship."
They're all part of the same business fabric, and I think we need to be much better at representing it.
That's why one of the things that has come to matter most to me this year is the idea of community. Not understood as a place where we only meet people who think like us, but as a space where we can share experiences, learn from those who have already covered part of the road, and get to know business realities that have nothing to do with our own.
This is precisely where the generational handover should happen. I don't believe in organisations of young people set against organisations of older ones, any more than I believe a generation should wait for the previous one to disappear before it can start to participate. I'm far more interested in the idea of building bridges between the two.
There's also something we sometimes forget: in a few years, we'll be on the other side. We'll be the ones deciding whether to open up space for those coming after us and whether we're capable of passing on what we've learned along the way. We'll probably understand even better then just how important it is to get this right now.
Generational handover, then, doesn't begin the day someone steps down from a responsibility, and another person takes their place. It begins much earlier, when different generations start working together, and when those of us who are younger also stop watching from the sidelines and decide to get involved.
"Perhaps we've internalised this idea so much that we've ended up waiting for someone to tell us when our turn had come"
For years we've been told we're the next generation. Perhaps we've internalised this idea so much that we've ended up waiting for someone to tell us when our turn had come.
I don't think we should wait.
We can keep listening to and learning from those who've been in business for many more years than us, while also starting to take on responsibilities and to participate in the conversations that will shape the years ahead.
This isn't about taking anyone else's place. It's simply about starting to take our own.
And that, perhaps, is why the time has come to put our hand up.