Noelia Fernández: "Creativity and talent remain essential in the digital environment"

"It’s particularly important to hold events on Transformation at our universities because what is needed is greater intellectual rigor, research and partnership among academics, professionals and companies who are addressing this challenge in a strategic way and with a clear commitment to finding long-term, sustainable solutions,” said Noelia Fernández, PRISA’s Chief Digital Transformation Officer, in her opening speech at the conference. Entitled "The re-evolution in intellectual rights affecting knowledge, creation and communication”, the event was held as part of the summer school at Madrid’s Complutense University (UCM) and organized by PRISA in collaboration with the university and two key players in digital transformation, Google and Telefonica.

The goal of the event, held on July 12 and 13, was to jointly identify and resolve some of the greatest challenges facing our sector and that are inextricably linked with the creation, communication and generation of knowledge. "PRISA is a very significant player in this field and we have a duty to ensure that we contribute to society responsibly and that we change things for the better," said Fernández, adding that the digital world is almost inevitably having an impact on management and procedure in the creative industries. “This will become evident in the regulatory framework, in the creation and management of products and in the guarantees that ensure that any value created is properly distributed and shared".

Fernández noted that some phenomena such as the ubiquity of access, the removal of barriers in content consumption, low marginal costs, the expectation of immediacy, and accelerated evolution have caught us "unprepared” meaning that many companies are not reacting appropriately or in an “economically viable” way to the growing demands of users. Given the complexity of this issue, Fernández urged attendees not to approach the phenomenon of transformation with a digital strategy, but rather with "a strategy in the digital world." "It’s transformation, pure and simple, and in the case of PRISA it has a major impact on both the media and education," she said.

Turning to the media, Fernández said that the current model is not sustainable and requires further momentum from the world of data, without losing sight of editorial quality and critical outlook. And in the case of education, she recalled that our touchstone is not merely the school but also the child, the teacher and parents. They are all crucial parts of the education ecosystem. In this context, adaptive education, the learning environment and student support will be critical to improving the training of new generations.

Digital transformation, then, is not a matter of technological change aimed at ensuring more efficient processes, but, rather, the ability of an organization to redefine its value in meaningful terms and render this in a totally different context, according to Fernández.

Thus, there are "new and diverse opportunities" that require our intellectual and emotional abilities. Creativity and human talent to question, invent, critically analyze and ultimately create, "are irreplicable".

You can read Noelia Fernandez’s full opening speech on the Toyoutome blog.