What is talent? Is it more than a gift or an ability? What role do perseverance and effort play? Is everyone talented? What characteristics do talented people have? With this bombardment of questions, the journalist Bibiana Ballbè kicked off the second edition of Building Futures, an initiative promoted by La Roca Village in which different personalities from various disciplines meet to discuss major issues. Today, talent and creativity are the focus of the debate.
At The Apartment in La Roca Village today are: Jordi Herreruela, engineer and director of Festival Cruïlla; Mateu Hernández CEO of Barcelona Global; Genís Roca, archaeologist, businessman and university professor; Elena Foguet, Business Director of Value Retail Spain; Santi Moix, multifaceted artist and creator: sculptures, drawings, ceramics and mural paintings; Carlos Duran, Founder and Director of the Senda Gallery and co-director of the Loop festival; and Teresa Vallbona, journalist specialized in press and cultural communication.
A Stanford University study says that 80% of people do not know what their talent is. But before opening this melon, Ballbè asks to start at the beginning and define the concept of talent.
Genís Roca explains it as “the intersection between ability and a gift; as what tells us that something is special and singular”. Quickly, Carlos Duran links talent to effort and emphasizes the fact that it may not be linked to a vocation, but that magic happens when the two are aligned. Santi Moix complains that talent is now related to the ability to earn money and adds that it shouldn’t be that way and Elena Foguet finishes off with the fact that “everyone has a talent and that without a doubt it has to be disassociated from earning money, which is where its meaning comes from, if we refer to the etymology”.
The conversation progresses with the energy and passion worthy of vibrant personalities who come together to talk about talent, and Teresa Vallbona opens the debate that effort and work are key to making talent crystallize: “If you don’t put in hours, with talent You just don’t get anywhere.”
Jordi Herreruela adds that yes, but that it not only depends on individual qualities and the hours worked, but also on many external conditioning factors such as when you arrive, the means and resources available to you and the general situation.
Served debate, to which Elena Foguet joins, and shares that along the way, if you work and persevere, these opportunities come out. Carlos Duran adds to the reflection adding that luck is caused by perseverance, which is never given: “Luck is a compendium of attitudes towards life, he says. To which Genís Roca sentences: you keep going to achieve (or not!). Because from the privilege it is easy to think like that, but there are many other realities”.
Elena Foguet continues the debate with a revealing formula when she shares that the sum of talent and creativity leads us directly to touch the field of emotions and adds: “It is when talent and creativity meet that you connect with sensitivity, diversity, inclusiveness. Art and music quickly connect you with a much broader world and transcend the concept of “I”; they are languages ??that everyone understands and can decipher. And that is why we at La Roca Village provide spaces to creativity in its broadest sense.
Jordi Herreruela agrees and confesses that this is the reason why he dedicates himself to the world of music: “Because the magic of music allows him to connect with his emotions and disconnect from the world”.
Mateu Hernández agrees and leads the conversation to the importance of talent ecosystems: “talent needs stimulating places to develop and states that he would like Barcelona to be a stimulating city where talented people who add value feel at home and that this is the great challenge and the great opportunity of the city: to generate a diverse, frictional, competitive ecosystem that can create a market. And Santi Moix adds that it is important to live in a place where you have to “murder” someone. If you don’t have this in your city, you leave, because you are no longer interested”.
And what is Barcelona? asks Ballbè. Everyone talks and discrepancies are served: Mateu Hernandez says that he still has a long way to go and Santi Moix nods; Jordi Herreruela says quite the opposite: “Barcelona is a leader in creativity and always has been, and this is what attracts people. But we have not been able to value it. The creativity sector is fragmented and is not visualized the set. The key is to gather the set of creativity under one label, and here we have not succeeded”.
The truth is that there is creative talent in Barcelona, ??it is evident, it is in our main DNA, but the attendees agree that we do not have the capacity to take risks, nor the capacity to organize ourselves business-wise and structurally to sell this talent to the world. Jordi Herreruela is forceful when he affirms this and illustrates it with a very clear example: “when four friends get together to make a video game, from the first day they know they are starting a business; when four friends get together to make music they have no idea that they are doing a business, but they are doing it. It is clear that in the world of creativity we need to find risk: venture capital determined to invest in creativity.
The debate comes to an end and a final reflection is created: without a doubt, Barcelona has an indestructible brand and there is a desire to rethink it. There is a millionaire industry that is born from creativity and we have to join it and be optimistic. Barcelona has a creative DNA and has every possible opportunity to reinvent itself: it just needs to believe it and take risks.
