On 16 November 2011, the Rafael del Pino Foundation hosted the conference "Global Financial Challenges and Business Opportunities in Times of Crisis", organised in collaboration with the MIT Sloan School of Business, in which the following participated David SchmittleinDean John C Head III of the MIT Sloan School of Management; William AuletDirector General of the MIT Entrepreneurship Center; S.P. KothariGordon Y. Billard Professor of Management and Deputy Dean of the MIT Sloan School of Management; and Gordon Y. Billard Professor of Management and Deputy Dean of the MIT Sloan School of Management; and Stewart MyersRobert C. Merton Professor (1970) of Financial Economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
William Aulet The crisis has caused a strong upturn in entrepreneurial activity, although it may seem counter-intuitive, as one might think that in times of crisis people are looking for 'secure jobs'. But what we used to consider secure employment, in the administration or in big business, is no longer so secure. Moreover, the really bright workers do not want to be employees and put their talents at the service of someone else's profit; they prefer to control their own destiny and create their own work. Studies show that in the US, over the last 25 years, all of the 40 million net jobs created in the period have been created by companies that were less than five years old, i.e. companies created by entrepreneurs whose main characteristic is neither to be big nor small; it is to be new, based on the ambition to grow globally through innovation. This is what will get us out of the impasse and create attractive jobs, enough for workers to have a better quality of life. The challenge of unemployment is enormous, especially in terms of youth unemployment in countries like Spain. But I repeat: the jobs that young people are looking for are not in the administration or in big companies. They are going to be created by companies that may not even have been born yet. That is why we need young people trained in entrepreneurship. Moreover, entrepreneurship is not a geographical issue, the model of the entrepreneur who creates in his garage; it is not a North American heritage. Entrepreneurship is a cultural issue. You don't have to have a garage; you have to have the courage to go for it".
On the challenges facing markets, David Schmittlein was in no doubt: "Uncertainty and lack of political will are the biggest challenges. Market volatility can be interpreted as an overreaction to the information they are receiving, that is true. But we cannot speak of overreaction if we look at it from the perspective of uncertainty, as uncertainty is a major reason for market concerns and the cautiousness with which global investment is behaving.
