The economy and society evolve at the pace of innovation, the true key behind growth and development. Innovation drives labor productivity, improves working conditions, and expands possibilities. The investment required to foster it is rewarded and applauded by society and economic agents, who are able to appreciate how innovation enables improvement from the starting point and adaptation to new times.
The current technological revolution, materialized in digitalization, nevertheless challenges the model that innovation has followed until now. The term ‘disruptive technology’ already suggests that we are talking about new products and services that technology did not previously provide or did not give us access to. Although innovation may have been groundbreaking in the past, it has not been as much as at this moment. The Internet opens up a world of possibilities that facilitates communication, improves access to products and services, and affects many production models. The ‘Platform Economy,’ for example, presents itself as a new economic architecture that requires reflection on its impact on the business structure of many companies, collaboration between them, and also regulation for authorities.
Today’s increasingly digital society demands constant innovation to respond to emerging challenges. And although digital transformation provides solutions, it moves so fast that it also generates uncertainty and raises questions. Among other topics of debate is the development of artificial intelligence, the changing job profiles that will be demanded in the future, and the need to ensure that no one is left out of the benefits it brings. Artificial intelligence has generated machines that respond to stimuli as humans would and that learn from experience. Some view it as a substitute for labor, although perhaps we should value it as a source of greater production possibilities and, therefore, as a complement to current jobs. But it is necessary for new technology to be accompanied by digital training. Do we actually know all the possibilities offered by that small computer we have in our pocket? Do we know how to get the most out of our mobile phone?
Another question arising from digital innovation is “network economies of scale,” which lead to the creation of enormous technology conglomerates and pose risks to competition, stability, and customer protection, as recently demonstrated. No one can be against digitalization, but we must always seek the necessary balance between advances and the risks they pose to citizens’ well-being. The dizzying technological evolution we are witnessing should not lead us to question what works well simply because it is not the most recent solution. Bizum is a good example of innovation in payments in Spanish banking, currently a system that is difficult to improve and highly valued by both consumers and businesses.
In financial services, new technologies enable banks to improve their management processes and adapt them to the needs of customers, who are increasingly better informed and demand new, simpler, and more personalized services. Banks are now working hard to meet the growing demands of their digital customers, although satisfying the needs of all their customers has always been their obsession and the key to their success. Especially those with greater difficulties in benefiting from digitalization, who in Spain have at their disposal one of the largest commercial structures in all of European banking. The customer, digital or analog, always has the final say.
José Luis Martínez Campuzano, spokesperson for the Spanish Banking Association
