Cualquiera que me conoce sabe que me encanta el debate de ideas y, sobre todo, cómo generar los entornos propicios para ello. Creo que estar abiertos a la autocrítica y en inmediatamente poner el foco en cómo solucionarlo es un paso enorme hacia algo mejor.
Mientras aquí se sigue hablando de «paguita» y críticas aleatorias en Twitter, en Estados Unidos parece que algo se ha empezado a mover en el mundo emprendedor. Aparte de todo el increíble esfuerzo de Bill Gates (su artículo sobre el coronavirus es lectura imprescindible), Marc Andreessen (cofundador de Netscape y uno de los principales inversores de capital riesgo en San Francisco) ha publicado un interesante debate en el blog de su fondo con su punto de vista:
Part of the problem is clearly foresight, a failure of imagination. But the other part of the problem is what we didn’t *do* in advance, and what we’re failing to do now. And that is a failure of action, and specifically our widespread inability to *build*. (…) The problem is desire. We need to *want* these things. The problem is inertia. We need to want these things more than we want to prevent these things. The problem is regulatory capture. We need to want new companies to build these things, even if incumbents don’t like it, even if only to force the incumbents to build these things. And the problem is will. We need to build these things.
It’s time to build, por Marc Andreessen.
Obviamente las reacciones a su ensayo no han tardado en llegar. Me quedo con dos (las negritas son mías):
This leads to the core question about Silicon Valley and its relationship to Andreessen’s essay: has tech — specifically the software-centric tech that Andreessen has done more than anyone to proselytize — been the primary source of American innovation because it represented the future? Or has it been the future because it was the only space where innovation was possible, because of things like inertia and regulatory capture in the real world? (…) What I also sense in Andreessen’s essay, though, is the acknowledgment that tech too has chosen the easier path. Instead of fighting inertia or regulatory capture, it has been easier to retreat to Silicon Valley, justify the massive costs of doing so by pursuing infinite-upside outcomes predicated on zero marginal costs, which means relying almost exclusively on software as the means of innovation. To put it another way, where did Andreessen’s personal preferences end and his vision begin?
How Tech Can Build, por Ben Thompson.
Similarly, the companies that make ventilators are private companies. They didn’t make more ventilators because there wasn’t demand for more ventilators. Same goes for surgical masks, eye shields, hospital gowns. Now, you can argue the government should’ve been stockpiling more of this stuff all along — and definitely should have been ramping up production in January and February — but a capitalist logic of efficiency prevails both inside and outside the market. Take, for instance, the wildly successful Obama administration program to loan money to renewable energy companies that became infamous because one of those companies, Solyndra, was a bust. That program led to a slew of successes (including Tesla) and turned a profit to taxpayers. As Michael Lewis argues at length in his book The Fifth Risk, the problem, if anything, was that it was too cautious — so afraid of a Solyndra-like story that it wasn’t funding sufficiently risky investments. But they proved right to be afraid. If even the government is forced to turn a constant profit on its programs and to avoid anything that might look like a boondoggle, you can imagine the pressure actual private companies are under. CEOs of all kinds of companies lament “short-termism.” Startup theorist Eric Ries has even gotten SEC approval for a “long-term stock exchange” meant to ease the problem.
Why we can’t build, por Ezra Klein.
Creo que el debate que plantea Ezra Klein es muy interesante, porque va a la raíz del problema. Hemos hecho cadenas de producción «super lean» y «just in time» y modelos «asset light» o «hardware light» tremendamente eficientes pero con un potencial problema: la absoluta dependencia de terceros (países, empresas) para llevar a cabo nuestra actividad. Algo que se ha demostrado una y otra vez con el material procedente de China. Aplicado a otro entorno: ¿Cuántos de nuestros negocios o gobiernos dependen en amplia medida de nubes privadas de alojamiento como las de Amazon, Google o Microsoft?.
Prácticamente ningún inversor valora que una empresa pueda estar preparada para «algo» que «quizá» suceda o que incluso no sabemos que pueda suceder (los dichosos «cisnes negros» o «unknowns unknowns«). ¿Debería asumir el Estado esas inversiones? ¿Cambiará nuestra visión acerca del largo plazo? Yo soy un tanto optimista sobre la resolución de la crisis pero pesimista acerca del cambio en profundidad en la sociedad. El tiempo dirá.