The knowledge community created by BBVA, OpenMind, publishes an annual paper on the leading socio-technical issues of the day, featuring the opinions of some of the world’s most prestigious experts.
The IEN Business School, at Polytechnic University of Madrid, has reached an agreement with OpenMind to transform the paper into free online courses tutored by professors associated with the university.
The complex times that we live in make it essential that we reflect on the future of mankind and the societies we live in. Scientific advances, technological progress, economic globalization, financial crises, political and social upheaval and the problems facing our planet, such as climate change and environmental degradation, all represent multiple factors that are very difficult to reconcile. And furthermore the world faces a crisis of values, a concern for social ethics and responsibility, the failures of democracy, exhaustion of political parties and doubts over capitalism, all of which renders it very difficult to perform successful diagnosis, make decisions and take action.
In this climate, just looking back at the past and examining the present are insufficient to understanding what is happening and how our problems might be addressed. We must take both these traditional means of facing problems and combine them with a forward view and an understanding of what the future might hold.
There is also an innovation imperative for our society and businesses. Only an innovative society can have any success addressing the challenges of the future and only innovative companies will triumph in the struggle to be competitive in a globalized world.
This course deals with the problems discussed here, how they evolve over time and how they might shed light on and give us an understanding of our present condition.
OpenMind
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