The managing partner of PROALucía Casanueva, took part yesterday in the conference 'The value of collaboration', organised by WPO (Women Presidents Organization) and IE University. She was joined by Susana Gómez, CEO of Smart Culture; Lourdes Ferrer, CEO of Percentil; Sofía Medem, CEO of Connecting Visions. In it, they concluded that collaboration is fundamental for the continuity and growth of companies.
The event was opened by Teresa Martín-Retortillo, Executive President of IE Exponential Learning, and Camille Burns, CEO of WPO, who reviewed the activities of the organisation, which has 2,000 members worldwide. Valeria Rodríguez-Codina Felgueras, WPO Chapter Chair Spain and Latam, acted as moderator.
Susana Gómez then focused her speech on smart organisations, i.e. "those whose purpose is to generate prosperity for the planet and people". In her speech, she advocated "collaborating to build organisations that are bigger than the people that make them up". A need that he based on the fact that these have gone "from having an average life of 60 to 30 years and in Spain only 50% of the companies that are created exceed three years of life". In this regard, he recalled that we are one of the countries with the highest business mortality rate.
The reason for this situation, he said, is that "we are using tools designed in the 20th century to solve 21st century problems". And he pointed out that what characterises intelligent organisations is that "they must be able to take on the challenge of a reality in continuous and constant change". Something to which, in his opinion, all companies should aspire, "because when you help a company to become an intelligent organisation, you help society as a whole". And he offered four fundamental keys to achieving this change: having a purpose, ensuring sustainability, taking people into account and generating prosperity in the communities around them. In this sense, she valued the fact that WPO connects "businesswomen who build organisations that make a difference".
In the round table that took up the last part of the day, Lourdes Ferrer, who runs Percentil, a second-hand clothing trading platform that is committed to reducing the environmental impact of fashion, advocated going beyond vertical collaboration and "collaborating with women who are going through similar situations to yours in different sectors".
Sofía Medem, founder of Connecting Visions, a company that has reinvented and democratised consultancy through an open ecosystem of talent and technology, defined collaboration as "a way of learning, to do something great you have to collaborate if you want to achieve important goals".
Finally, Lucía Casanueva, founder of the communication consultancy PROA, which is committed to transformation for progress, stated that, "in our business model, without collaboration there is no company". Furthermore, she explained that "something that seems to me essential for a company to succeed is to apply the group idea, to work the collective mind of the whole team at the service of the organisation". And he concluded that "any organisation that does not have collective thinking, after what we have gone through with Covid, is going to disappear".