Altered Minds: Innovation in Mallorca

It was informative to hear an interview for the BBC with Brent Hurley, one of the founders of YouTube. His business was a product of California's Silicon Valley, where he still believes, despite the emergence of serious technology leaders such as YouTube, that young entrepreneurs can make it if they have the right products and are able to draw on the right talent pool. Hurley described Silicon Valley as a "state of mind", one which allows new businesses, even when confronted with what might seem obstructive taxation (as there is in California), to breakthrough. It is all a question of mentality, and this mentality can permit similar technology-based clusters to rise up elsewhere.

Hurley's views are, however, ones predicated on a particular culture. The American business culture has long hailed the risk-taker and the entrepreneur, it has long been aided by risk capital, it has long been one of the "can-do" rather than the cannot. The American business culture also underwent a seismic shift in its attitudes when the realisation was made as to the competitive nature of Japanese corporations. From the late 1970s onwards, this culture was transformed within organisations. Hierarchies became less the order of the day. Participation, empowerment, flat structures all found their way into the management and organisational lexicon.

In Mallorca, ambitions are harboured for something along the lines of Silicon Valley. It would be more of a Silicon Hollow, one fancies, but there are certain factors which could allow such ambitions to be realised. Well, one in particular; the climate. Mallorca's a nice place to live and work, it has a nice lifestyle, it has a Mediterranean climate (obviously), one similar to Californa's. This climate-lifestyle axis has brought interest in terms of business location from overseas, while the technological infrastructure, notably Palma's ParcBit, does offer some grounds for being optimistic that a technological new age dawns in Mallorca and helps to move the island's economy away from its dangerous and lop-sided dependence upon tourism.

But initiatives such as ParcBit can only go so far. The vision, albeit an unclear one, for a more technological future is obscured by the existence of elements that California does not suffer from. There is, for example, a very different business culture, both generally and within organisations, one that is partially a reflection of what remains a societal culture: one of the hierarchy.

This hierarchy can often come in the form of a patriarchy or matriarchy. Families have a tendency to dominate the business culture and so the culture mirrors the deference shown within the family structure. It might be a culture which is healthy for continuity but it is rarely a culture which fosters free thinking, challenges to decisions, innovation. It is also a culture which can breed one of the most pernicious elements of the family organisation, that of nepotism, and this nepotism is something else which manifests itself in wider business and governmental society. Friendships, family ties, networks, who-you-know count for more than merit, talent and what you know. Nepotism and "amiguismo" are regularly cited by younger Spaniards as being reasons why they all but give up on finding decent employment and so help to fuel the brain drain heading abroad.

The hierarchy is everywhere. It exists in different types of business - from multinationals to the small business - in government "companies" (albeit the number of these are being reduced) and in political parties. Along with the omnipresence of the hierarchy comes the nepotism and the power of the network, and there is an example of just this which has seemingly been at work in Mallorca, an example right at the heart of business innovation.

The IDI is a Balearic Government "company". The acronym stands for Institute of Business Innovation. It should, therefore, be an agency for good in pursuit of a goal of greater economic diversification. But the IDI has been savaged by cutbacks under the current government. Jobs have gone, but there are also accusations flying as to the basis upon which job elimination has been made. They centre on political bias, i.e. employees with sympathies for parties (most obviously PSOE) were let go in favour of those who are supporters of the Partido Popular.

There may well of course be very valid reasons unassociated with political affiliation for employment decisions having been made, but if affiliation was a real factor then it confirms the power of the network being commanded by the hierarchy, in this instance one political party and that party's leadership.  

Mallorca has a disadvantage in the technological stakes which comes from its less than satisfactory educational system, but this cannot be wholly blamed for a lack of innovation. After all, for any group of underachievers there will always be one overachiever and potential business genius. Mallorca also has a history of entrepreneurialism. It is not as if, therefore, there aren't elements in Mallorca which could make a success of a new technological age. But paramount to this success is the need for a change in culture at governmental and corporate levels. The eradication of hierarchies and the doffing of the cap are as necessary as the elimination of the network and the nepotism.

Brent Hurley believes that Silicon Valleys can be replicated anywhere. If the talent exists, then maybe so. But they won't be if the culture doesn't allow them to flourish. The state of mind that needs to alter is that of the keepers of the hierarchies - the political parties and the corporations. Alter minds, and the entrepreneurial spirit in Mallorca might just fly.

Taking Grapes From A Blind Man

There is a Spanish tale about a poor child who is the servant to a blind man. It is a tale about how the child, Lazaro, learns cunning and how to cheat the cheaters. In the tale he is eating grapes with the blind man. They share them one at a time. The man then starts to take two, so Lazaro takes three. When the grapes are finished, the man calls Lazaro a cheat. Lazaro asks him why. The man says that if he cheats and if the boy says nothing, he will assume that the boy is cheating as well. The moral of the story (such as it is) is that everyone tries to cheat everyone else.

I have paraphrased this outline of what is in fact a famous Spanish tale. I have taken it from an article* on Smart Planet by the American, Barcelona-based writer Jennifer Riggins. It is unsurprising that the tale is as apparently famous as it is, as it is a fable for Spanish culture; success comes to those not who work hard and take risks but to those who are crafty and cunning - those who are cheats or, if you prefer, crooks.

I know a businessman and a pillar of society. Actually, I don't know him personally. I know of him and I know who he is. I also know what he is. I see him from time to time. He drives an ostentatiously large vehicle, the size of which is matched only by the gargantuan cigar which is permanently in his mouth. I am not someone prone to spite or to malevolence, but I would happily shove that cigar right down his fat neck. Why? Because of what I know about him.

I would like to believe that there are businesspeople who have achieved what they have through hard work and risk-taking and through these alone. I can think of some of whom I would be sorry to learn that they had achieved what they have by less than totally honourable means. But I wonder how many have followed this virtuous path to success. Jennifer Riggins says: "Spanish history and culture don't teach the philosophy of success by hard work and risk-taking but to have respect for those who have gained success through acting craftily and cunningly". Amen.

A preference for the spoils of graft as opposed to graft (the word graft has two very different meanings) is one that elicits the not untypical response of "ah yes, but this is Spain", a response by both Spaniards and non-Spaniards. This is Spain. Yes, so it is. And look where it is. Cheating of all types is one reason for the country being where it is and one reason why getting away from where it is will be so damn difficult. It is a response that has to stop.

Spain has a national government that currently faces the embarrassment of being accused of harbouring some cheats of its own. Shrugging off this embarrassment, it seeks to find a way out of the ruddy great hole that the country is in by suggesting that it will make incentives available to entrepreneurs, young ones at that. The government has recently discovered a new political toy, one called entrepreneurialism and one, so the government hopes, that will lead Spain to a promised land of economic salvation. The government's hopes are misplaced. It is playing with its toy in a country not prone to being entrepreneurial or to honouring business risk-takers. Instead, it is a country that honours the dishonourable. It will argue that it doesn't and that it empowers judges and prosecutors to bring the dishonourable to book. Sometimes they are, but for the most part, "this is Spain" means that they aren't and so the wheel of honouring the cheats turns yet again.

The young, these mythical young entrepreneurs of which the government speaks, look on and see that cheating, taking more grapes than the blind man, is the way to succeed. They can see greater success from one form of graft over another, because this is how it is. This is Spain. They have no entrepreneurial streak because the education system prevents it, because parental attitudes are still fixed in times when education mattered only for its menial or dissatisfying consequence, because the banks prevent it, because the preferred option is for a life of non-productive, non-value-added civil service work (and if not this, then being a bar worker or some summer beach bum).

Yes, this is Spain. Spain of such tradition. Like the twelve grapes at New Year. Or thirteen, if you are with a blind man.

* http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/global-observer/why-the-spanish-arent-entrepreneurs/9312


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Smalltown Boy

I don't, as a rule, get involved with the world of art, but I met someone the other day who was looking for an outlet for some high-priced yachting paintings. Though not of the local area, the paintings sounded to me to be art investments that fitted with both the local yachting world and the local high-net-worth world. So I rang a gallery. Had I known then quite how much the paintings cost and how much the gallery might have stood to make, I would probably have approached the call differently, but I explained only that they were of high quality, from painters of international renown and that they would fetch a euro or two; well significantly more as it turns out. The response was not quite as I expected. Not only was it negative, it was the basis of the negativity that took me aback. It was as though any excuse would do not to have the paintings. And this was from someone I know well and get on with well; a Mallorcan someone.

The other day I was in a chemists in Alcúdia. It was taking an inordinately long time to get served. The reason for this was that two local ladies were spending an inordinately long time engaged in conversations far removed from the purpose of their visit.

Why should I mention these two cases together? The first struck me as an example, not for the first time here, of tunnel vision; of an inability to consider something outside of the norm. It was, if you like, a demonstration of an absence of entrepreneurialism. The second made me believe that a trip to the local chemists, as much as the café or the supermarket or indeed almost any other place of encounter, is a social event. Then I put them together and came up with the link - small town; small town mentality.

Much is said of the Mallorcan character and indeed I have written about it here, but to what extent is that character, in towns such as Alcúdia or Pollensa, just a reflection of small-townism that would be the same more or less anywhere? For visitors who find the resorts bustling with large numbers of people in summer, it is easy to overlook the fact that neither Alcúdia nor Pollensa can muster 20,000 inhabitants; they are small towns by any definition.

I grew up in small towns; indeed one of them, Bagshot, was really a village. It still is in the way that the place is now "marketed". Yet Bagshot had a railway - to London - from the nineteenth century; the first part of the M3 motorway, to include these towns, was opened in 1971. Alcúdia and Pollensa have a motorway, but only in the last year or so. The point is that, small towns they may have been, but the perspective that infrastructure offered was wider. Unlike much of England, with its transport heritage, the northern Mallorca towns were largely cut off until only relatively recently. The parochialism that this bred still exists, and it can be one that is centred on the individual towns; the rest of the island might as well not exist for some.

I'm not convinced that the art-gallery example is indicative of a wider lack of entrepreneurial vision on the island. One cannot draw a conclusion as to a Mallorcan character in this regard; Palma, as a city, is quite different. You may recall a piece I wrote which referred to education in Puerto Pollensa and how one local woman would much prefer to be living in Palma and exposing her son to the greater commercial influence of the city, rather than the laidback, almost unreal beach focus of the north. But combine a small-town mentality to a Mallorcan sense of superiority - as identified in "Beloved Majorcans" - and one has the potential for lack of advance.

The train may yet come to the north; it will have arrived some 150 years late by comparison with England, but not only England. What industrial revolution there was on mainland Spain at least had a railway network, albeit one that was a missed opportunity in historical terms, from the mid to late nineteenth century. When the train finally does arrive, symbolically it will - perhaps - mark the day when the towns of northern Mallorca begin to shed off their innate small-townism.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Amy Winehouse, "Valerie" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CJzMkvJUno). Today's title - "run away, turn away".

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