Héctor Cuenca: "The discourse of entrepreneurship can reach absurd limits"
At 21, Hector Cuenca coordinates, as a partner and director of growth, an ambitious project: NewGen (also know as Odder). It is a platform born in Barcelona that aims to connect young professionals who have decided to bet on a promising idea.
In addition to trying to discover more about this interesting project in which he is immersed, we wanted to meet with this student of Administration and Business Management and Law to talk about the concept of entrepreneurship and the new work reality of which we have not yet overcome the thirty.
Psychology and Mind: We know that lately you are dedicating your time to NewGen, which is a platform to connect entrepreneurs and facilitate things so they can develop their project. I'm right?
Hector Cuenca: To that and to try to get me two races, in that order of priorities (laughs).
In NewGen you have also had the idea of offering the possibility that the targeted people have the support of expert mentors in different areas of work. How did the idea come about?
It is not something new. The mentoring, as it is called today, is an institution as old as humanity. What is new is the will to create platforms that democratize access to it. That is to say, to this day, if you want to receive mentoring from someone, the most you can do is ask for advice from family, friends, former teachers ... And be lucky that some of them have enough faith in the project and in you. , as well as enough time and resources to help you develop it. What does this mean? That people with a higher social extraction, or with greater networks of contacts, is the one that really gets mentors capable of making a difference. What we propose - and it is something that is working quite well in the US, facilitating the success of novel, viable and original projects and the social ascent of its creators - consists of creating a completely transparent platform, in which you can see the different mentors who are willing to invest a monthly afternoon in a project, as well as their skills and background professional and academic, and request the attention of those who most convince you, and in which these mentors can, also, see the profiles of all kinds of young people who apply for their mentoring and select from among those who seem most qualified, bright, original ... It is, in short, a way that talent and originality prevail over circle and social extraction.
What is an entrepreneur? What is the difference, in your opinion, between "entrepreneurship" to dry and "social entrepreneurship"?
Entrepreneur it is, in theory, the one that with its creativity designs a product (or a variation on a product) that offers added value completely different from those that exist in the market and that is capable of, at least, making the necessary procedures to put the project in motion. Not every entrepreneur is an entrepreneur; nor anyone who "has an idea" ... We must demystify that of "having an idea"; there is a joke among entrepreneurs that, like so many jokes, hides a great truth "-I have a great idea of business, I only need an investor willing to finance it and an engineer capable of doing it -then what do you have?" An entrepreneur is not an intellectual that castles in the air, but an executor. Another thing is that this is desirable: One could argue, quite rightly, that there should be bodies, state or private, that would allow all good ideas (viable, with real added value and with a positive impact on society) to have financing and personnel to carry them out, and then the entrepreneurs could be only planners, and surely it would be more efficient and fun, but unfortunately that is not the reality.
I am that, to belong to the sector to which I belong, I have enough ideas ... Let's leave it there. For me, there should not be any difference between entrepreneurship Y social entrepreneurship: You can not expect a viable economy based simply on "social projects", which often lack profitability, nor a society worthy of belonging if economically profitable projects are harmful to that society. There is a concept in economics that, just to be taken into account and corrected, would end much of the cruelty of market failures: externalities. An externality is a result (negative, generally) of the activity of a specific company that, because it does not impact in any way on it, is not accounted for.This is the case, for example, of toxic spills in case there is no regulation in the state in question. Since not a single dollar is spent, that activity is not recorded. Only with the States to calculate, through impartial audits, the externalities of each company, and not allow the existence of projects that - although in purely economic terms - cause more harm than good to society, we would end the need to differentiate between " Entrepreneurship "profitable but soulless and" Social Entrepreneurship "committed but not viable. In addition, I believe that precisely this dichotomy is very harmful to our worldview: it bathes everything that has public utility with a certain patina of insolvency, of utopia, of deficitarism.
Do you think that the entrepreneurial discourse is abused? On the other hand, what do you think is the relationship between this new way of understanding labor relations with the phenomenon of "precarious"?
Of course it is abused. It is a very useful discourse in a situation like the current one, of galloping economic and institutional crisis, and of growing disengagement of the States towards their citizens, as well as of increasing labor flexibility. And of course, sometimes this leads to absurd points, in which it seems that you have to become enterprising and freelancer even the unskilled worker of construction or industry. There is a perverse point in that, especially when Spanish legislation makes it so difficult for freelancers (or autonomous, as they have been called throughout life). In addition, we return to that of "What is to be an entrepreneur?" And we see that by the very nature of the concept, it is only applicable to rapidly evolving sectors or to classic professions but of a "creative" type, from the Right to Literature or the Marketing, in which the personal characteristics of the worker can make a difference.
The misuse (and abuse) of the concept is where the failpreneurs, many times simply precarious entrepreneurs / freelancers for whom the company ends up being, rather, a poorly paid job and even more a slave than if it were paid by others. You can not tell the unemployed of all sectors, regardless of their training, that "to see if they undertake", because then we have cases like Rubí, the dormitory city in which I lived for many years, in which the rotation of owners of bars, stores, etc. It is huge, generating even more frustration and poverty in those who were looking to have their own business a source of income and stability.
Also, as I said before, not even a good idea in a creative sector allows you to always get ahead: There are not enough financing instruments, help for the entrepreneur, etc. In the end, instead of the "creator", you have to be, especially at the beginning, the jefazo and the last monkey at a time. And yes, during that time, you are a "precarious". And so much
What is your vision of the current labor market and why do you think that "entrepreneurship" is a good option to give out so many young people who can not find a job? Is entrepreneurship a kind of 'panacea' to end unemployment?
Well, in the medium to long term it is very different. As things stand, you can not compete on the downside. The relocation, the growing mechanization, technological improvements, make the market demand of unskilled workers go, in Europe and much of the Western world, clearly downward. When your work can be done by anyone, in a world with 7,000,000,000 people and going up, they will find someone who makes it cheaper than you. It's like that, that's why you can not compete on the bottom. Especially when, as Toni Mascaró said at our event on November 13, in a matter of years we can witness the automation of all production processes in the developed world.
In such a world, the only real alternative for Europe's youth is to provide a lot of added value. Being able to do things that, literally, nobody else is capable of doing, at least not in the same way. We have the perfect infrastructure: almost universal health coverage; free and public basic education; the best universities in the world and the highest per capita income on the planet ... With that base, either we create a society of elites or we are making the idiot. Spain, as a paradigmatic example of what to do the idiot: we have one of the most educated youth in the world, with a very high percentage of students in the total population, and we are seeing how many must leave the country or accept jobs below of their abilities and qualification. You can not afford it, it's a real waste of talent and public money.
What characteristics do you think define entrepreneurial people? Is your personality or way of seeing life defined by some common characteristic?
I suppose there is a certain mixture between ambition (for what we are going to deny it) and independence, a combination, in my opinion of a humanist person, with a certain aura of romanticism, like Corsair of Byron or the Pirate of Espronceda (laughs). At the end of the day, you become an entrepreneur at that moment in what you think. And these are the job opportunities that society offers me? I think I can do more, so if there is no job I deserve I will have to create it, and that has a touch, you will not deny it, of rebellion, of quixotism, of not accepting the pre-established status quo.
It also relates the entrepreneur spirit with youth and, in addition, with the ability to be creative. From what you have been able to see in NewGen, do you think that today creativity is valued more than before?
I do not know if it is valued or not, still, but I think it should be, since it is a rising value. It is the only competitive advantage, at work level, offered by European and Western youth compared to other parts of the world. And at other levels, if we stop to think: We are a small part, both geographically and demographically, and not precisely the richest in natural resources. In the long term, it is that or nothing.
Since Psychology and Mind is a website dedicated to psychology, I would like to delve into this aspect a little. Do you think that the paradigm shift in the workplace is influencing in a negative way our capacity to develop in this society?
Maybe we do, as the crisis has caught us by surprise. We were the most hopeful generation in the history of this country (and surely the same could be said in the rest of the West), and now we have less possibilities than those that preceded us ... It has been a blow, clearly. It has left many young people, and not so young, without a place in society, and those who are still part of it has given them positions far below those they expected or deserved. Now, I think some of us will come out stronger than this, especially those who have grown up during the crisis. I think that many of us have an attitude of "If it does not exist, if it is not done, then we will have to invent it" and that can be a very important source of social change. We start with the most basic, work, without which we have no source of sustenance or role in society ... But imagine that the same attitude will apply to the Policy or any other area. That we do not like the matches that there are? Let's create one. That we do not like this cultural system? Well, let's think of a better one. We could be one of the most influential generations in history ... But for that we must understand where the entrepreneurial phenomenon comes from: the lack of solutions from Papá Estado and Mamá Corporación (plus Uncle Gilito de la Banca) and consider that If they do not give us a job, we'll set it up for ourselves, because maybe we should do the same if they do not give us justice or democracy.
What is the merit or value that you found in Psychology and Mind What led you to want to include us as one of the initiatives highlighted within NewGen?
Precisely that, that you have been a "Juan Palomo: I stew it, I eat it"; an example of entrepreneurship well understood: starting from scratch, with a good idea, a lot of work and without anyone giving you anything. Fuck, you moll a lot. In addition, you have experienced that "precarization" of those who start a project, making it compatible with long working days in a profession different from that for which you had studied ... You are an entrepreneur paradigm.
