Economía del conocimiento el gran reto | Antonio Cruz | TEDxGuadalajara
For over 25 years, I served as a senior executive in multinational companies, and my last position was President for Latin America of a Fortune 1 company. I still remember the day I was fired as one of the scariest days of my life. Following a spirit I've had since childhood, along with four friends, we decided to start a business. We wanted to make a healthy candy for children with HIV/AIDS here in Tlaquepaque, at a specialized center for their care. Always working closely with scientists from research centers, universities, chambers of commerce, and foundations, we developed a technology that transformed us from healthy candy makers to food biotechnologists. The researchers we interacted with asked us if we truly wanted to innovate, why not dedicate ourselves to modulating the only organic function that, as a whole, isn't encoded in our DNA? You see, digestion is a function that interacts with an entire universe at the microbiological level that lives within us but isn't part of us. So we studied the history of the industry, which led us back to 1880 in Russia, where a Nobel Prize winner discovered these small, beneficial bacteria that ultimately... They would be called probiotics. In 1907, specifically in Hungary, these bacteria were integrated with milk, creating not only a great product but also an entire industry: yogurt. By 1935, Japan had identified one of these bacteria with beneficial properties for human health and integrated it into fermented milk, which to this day is a multi- billion dollar global company. In France, in the late 1980s, they did the same with another probiotic in a drinkable yogurt. These last two major technologies resulted in great commercial successes and great products. More than a century had to pass before five irreverent Mexicans made the first disruption in this biotechnology. And do you know who said it had to be dairy? By replicating the biophysical and biochemical conditions of the best habitat for these beneficial microorganisms that live inside us, they developed a delicious-tasting gel food that modulates not only digestion but also other organic functions, such as reducing toxins in patients with chronic kidney failure, acting as an adjunct to chemotherapy and radiotherapy in cancer treatments, and reducing general illnesses in industrial kitchens. Biological growth promoters for support are just some examples of what we achieved; however, awards and congratulations didn't guarantee commercial success, and there's nothing more daunting than the shelf—it's cruel, ruthless, and merciless. We realized there were two major areas: one, a hard, scientific, mathematical approach that would lead us to a functional techno-prototype, which would only guarantee us the possibility of winning awards; the other, a softer, warm, social, human approach that would allow us to communicate that technology in a simple, direct, and, why not, fun way. We saw that there was another story parallel to ours, which began just ten years earlier, in 1870, right when Thomas Alva Edison patented his first fully mechanical sound-reproducing machine. By the 1930s, an electric motor had already been incorporated, and acetate had become a disc, creating not just a product but a huge industry. In the 1970s, the arrival of electronics brought new and better amplifiers with greater power and fidelity, while acetate, the disc, became thinner, lighter, and had greater capacity. By the 1980s... Although magnetic tape technology was developed in the 1920s, it wasn't until the 1970s that it achieved commercial success. In the 1980s, who didn't want a Walkman? By the 1990s, we had already switched to laser players that read compact discs. And yet, more than 100 years had to pass before someone arrived with the first technological disruption in the industry, thanks to Dr. Carl Heinz Brandenburg in Germany. Who said it had to be a vinyl record player and an amplifier? Why not integrate everything into a single device capable of storing large amounts of data and organizing it however I wanted? We realized that super products aren't enough to generate commercial success because super products require accompanying products and services in the market to explain what they are, what advantages they have, and where they can be obtained. It took the genius of Silicon Valley, who had never invented anything in his life, to change the world with German technology. And tell me, what would MP3 technology be without the internet? What would MP3 technology be without that online store that has everything from Katy Perry's latest hit to the new song by the local clowns we only know here? What would the hardware hold that inventory? What would MP3 be without the ability to buy the hardware online and have a courier company deliver it to me 24 hours later in the comfort of my home? What would MP3 be without 24/7 service for anything I need? Today, this technology has changed the world technologically, economically, and socially. We've already talked in these talks about the abyss, the silicon gap. There's a guru who deals with this, the abyss theory. In 2007, he came here to Guadalajara and gave us an hour of consultation. I arrived and asked him how to sell a disruptive biotechnology in a developing market like Mexico. He gave me the best consultation of my life. He looked me straight in the eyes and said, "I don't know, I have no idea. You'll answer that in five years, if it survives." And if we survive, it means you'll come back. We realized that everything is about feelings, from the fear of the experimental consumer who doesn't know what to expect from technology, to the hope of the visionary consumer who already has an expectation of improvement, to the security of the pragmatic consumer who doesn't like risk and where the money is made. We discovered a tool called kickboxing chess. First, you establish a strategy in the purest chess style: " This technology will be loved by gastroenterologists." Then you go down to the real world and face the brutal, violent, bloody, and expensive market. In this country, nobody is going to stop a gastrointestinal disease by spending more than $100 per consultation. With a total expense, you do n't see results. You go back and rethink the strategy. Who is the general practitioner for? Let's go back to the general practitioner, and you realize that in this country, most general practitioners work in offices adjacent to pharmacies where they already have a basic formulary. So you go, and in each iteration, you unfold the learning curve that will tell you which collateral products and services should accompany that technological development in its entry into the market. Closing the gap one by one, and just to avoid dying, every now and then a spark arrives that catalyzes and accelerates that knowledge. For us, one of the most significant came in year 3 when, on the verge of despair, on yet another day of wanting to close down, with deep fear, I answered the phone. It was a woman from Ocotlán, a nearby town here in the state of Jalisco. She said, " Hey, is this where they invented the gelatin? It's really delicious with lactobacilli." A little reluctantly, I said, "Yes, sir, this is where I can serve it. It 's difficult to get people to let me make my 11-month-old baby laugh faster, and well, I wanted to congratulate you." I thought, " Well, ma'am, it's good that your baby liked it." I thought, "Hurry, because soon there won't be any gelatin left for you or your baby." The woman ended up saying, "Yes, because you see, my 11-month-old baby used to take a long time to smile when he came out of chemo." There's a transition between fear and hope; it's called courage. We found that the function of these two areas—mathematical quality and human quality—can be integrated into a model of Technological management that generates products with high value- added science for health, nutrition, and well-being in the knowledge economy. The results among giants: biotechnology is growing at a double-digit rate wherever it is present. Just as a flower is ephemeral and combines its proteins to generate petals, and over time recombines them to generate fruit, in the same way, fear is a feeling that we can reconfigure; it is reconfigured into hope, and hope is what has written the most glorious pages in the history of humanity. If the change from analog to digital seemed like magic to us, the change from synthetic to biological will seem simply miraculous because of the transversality of biotechnology. In this new era of well-being, there will be three major industries: one in biopharmaceuticals, where the Germans are doing prodigious things; another in biofuels, where the Americans are at the forefront; and one more where there is an outstanding issue: food. We have a millennia-old tradition in Latin America, from the Mayans, the Aztecs, and the Incas. Field ferments, pulque, textiles, and patches are all bio-foods. At some point in history, between 2025 and... By 2030, a company, a man, and a woman equivalent to Steve Jobs and Apple will emerge in the era of wellness through bio-foods. This man and woman will be Mexican and will nourish our country, our region, and the rest of the world that lacks the privilege of our biodiversity, our ecosystems, our ancient indigenous heritage, our science, our technology, and, of course, our creativity. They say that the universe, if I try hard enough, sometimes conspires in our favor. It's true if we look at it a little differently. What if the universe were the most perfect, marvelous, beautiful symphony ever made and performed, and we, as part of the universe, were notes, and in our free will, we had the capacity to integrate in two ways: dissonantly or harmoniously, depending on whether we choose to be afraid or reconfigure it into hope? Tell me, you who are watching, what will you choose between the fear you may feel or the hope you know you must forge?