Page 18 - AC/E's Digital Culture Annual Report 2015

Cultural business models on the Internet18There are very few SMEs that innovate in Spain; they are small, lacking in resourcesand poorly managed with obsolete computer systems and a staff that is not flexible to change. This needs to be changed, because Spain’s business fabric is based on these SMEs which often have only a handful of employees – fewer than five – and merely “respond” to what their customers ask them for. They do one thing today and tomorrow, when a customer asksfor something new, they switch to doing that, instead of specifically focusing on a few things at which they are truly good and cost effective. Modern models must be highly efficient owing to the need to compete globally, and this calls for SMEs of a certain size that are very modern and global and capable of selling their products or services anywhere in the world.Modern models must be flexible and highly efficient in order to compete and sell products and services anywhere in the world.We must be prepared for an explosion in the field of new materials that will make new manufacturing models possible: from more flexible and durable materials ranging from components that imitate the qualities of spiders’ webs to new metals that will be harder than steel but weigh only half as much.This type of new material will create business models based one-person manufacturing and the offer of new services made possible by their qualities and features. It is very important to monitor the development of new materials ofthis kind because much of the work currently performed by SMEs will be significantly affected by their emergence and global spread.The main challenge we face in the twenty-first century is to educate a professional class that needs to carry on learning constantly. We can no longer finish our degree and believe we’ve got it made. Today continued learning is necessary. Therefore, the best professionals are those witha good educational grounding and who bear the germ of what they have “learned to learn” and, like a doctor who wishes to keep abreastof his profession, keep up to date by learning, reading and taking part in circles of knowledge and closely monitoring the evolution of purely twenty-first companies that do not cease to invent new work formats and new products and services.While they still can, twentieth-century compa- nies would be well advised to “purchase” novel startups that give them the fresh outlook and speed of twenty-first century companies. Their models need to evolve fast and to prevent small newcomers from gradually destroy their best businesses without their realising by changing them radically.As we have seen in the music sector, the world of cultural content and culture is being particu- larly affected by new models whose main feature is their digital delivery format.The world of the media, which has completely changed, is leaving behind a trail of corpses – publishers incapable of reacting to plummeting advertising and the lack of interest of new readers who seek on the Internet another kind ofChallenges of the twenty-first century. How to adapt a company to the twenty-first century