Closing Ceremony of the Deusto Business and Icade School Innovation Leadership Programmes

The Elecnor Foundation has sponsored the corporate leadership in entrepreneurship and innovation programme

In September 2020, the Elecnor Foundation and the University of Deusto and Icade Business School joined forces to support postgraduate academic training with a focus on leadership, with the desire to unite three different realities that need and complement each other so much: the university, business and political representatives.

The PLPE and PLCE programmes are designed so that students with high public responsibilities are trained in helping entrepreneurs through the administrations with the aim of creating jobs without endangering the sustainability of the system and that entrepreneurs learn first-hand about the main policies and initiatives carried out by leading companies.

The former President of the Spanish Government, Felipe González, was in charge of giving the closing speech of the last edition of the Public Leadership in Entrepreneurship and Innovation (PLPE) and Corporate Leadership in Entrepreneurship and Innovation (PLCE) programmes for the 2020-2021 academic year.

He stated that in order to exercise leadership, it is necessary to develop empathy. And, from his point of view, "a leader will cease to be a leader if he or she loses the ability to take charge of the state of mind of others". He also considered that in order to exercise leadership it is important to have a project with which to commit oneself in the short and medium term and to leave aside short-termism. 

Throughout his talk, former President González referred to different issues and, among them, he defended public-private collaboration, "which should generate relations of cooperation, but not of dependence", he warned. He said that, from his point of view, public administrations should look at and learn from the "good companies" that take the trouble to carry out evaluations of the projects they carry out. He felt that attempts at evaluation in the public sector, instead of analysing where they have failed in order to look for areas for improvement, end up turning into a hunt.

In addition, our CEO, Rafael Martín de Bustamante, addressed the audience, highlighting the importance for corporations of supporting leadership and collaboration between universities, the economy and business. He stressed that "if you develop your purpose in the right way, society rewards you and the company is successful and its profit and loss account and balance sheet improve and the company is sustainable. If you only think about achieving results above all else, you will end up disappearing. We cannot forget the lesson of the 2008 crisis, a crisis of values that caused the economic world to lose its way and only financial profits mattered.

At the closing ceremony, the students of the PLPE and PLCE presented their end-of-programme projects. This moment was moderated by Elecnor's Director of Corporate Development, Úrsula Albizuri and by Juan Moscoso del Prado, director of the PLPE; Emilio Martínez, co-director of the PLCE and Alberto Corcóstegui, co-director of the PLCE.