Blanca Sanjuanbenito

Scattered across BBVA City, there are over 50,000 sensors measuring everything from temperature and humidity, to brightness and motion. They were installed to ensure the proper running order of the facilities and employee comfort, but the engineers managing the building have found other ways of harnessing their capabilities to their full potential. By developing several algorithms capable of factoring in the readings they provide and additional data from external sources, they were able to achieve energy savings equivalent to the annual consumption of 200 households.

The digital revolution has transformed the business of many industries and the way in which they offer services to their customers. Carlos Casas and Ophélie Richard, or BBVA’s Talent & Culture area, addressed during Talent Day 2018 how these changes also require companies to radically transform the way in which they work and manage in-house talent.

Two years ago, when BBVA defined its company purpose —to bring the age of opportunity to everyone— it also decided that the best way to reach this ambitious goal was to transform itself into an agile organization. Ricardo Forcano, BBVA's Global Head of Talent & Culture, addressed more than 1,700 participants at the National Human Resources Congress where he shared the milestones of a journey that has revolutionized the way BBVA works.

The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao opens "Chagall. The Breakthrough Years, 1911-1919," sponsored by the BBVA Foundation.  The exhibition, which runs through September 2, consists of more than 80 early paintings and drawings by the Russian-born French artist.

Big technological companies and some banks such as BBVA are already using artificial intelligence (AI) in their products and services. However, the revolution that comes with this new technology has only just begun. At a conference organized by the IESE Business School, Ricardo Forcano, Global Head of Talent and Culture at BBVA, set forth six key issues that companies should bear in mind when adapting to this new environment.

The streets of New York's Chinatown, Granada's Sacromonte neighborhood, or Southall (London's Little India) are examples of how people tend to live near others from the same place or social status. But businesses, restaurants, and bars are just as important meeting places as where we live. Esteban Moro, Professor at Universidad Carlos III and MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), uses big data tools to analyze how people interact in these places.

Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity forever changed the way we understand space and time. But the German genius who was the centerpiece of a conference organized by the BBVA Foundation, “Explore Einstein's universe,” also left his mark on hundreds of technologies that we use daily: from Google Maps to solar panels, from self-lighting street lamps to laser beams. Our lives would be very different if Einstein hadn't been born.

Astrid, Adelaida and Arancha are three very different women. They live thousands of miles apart. In different countries, different continents. Their work is also completely unrelated: livestock breeding in Colombia, a store in Panama and mobile app development in Spain. However, there is one thing that these three women have in common: all of them, at one point in their lives, decided to start their own businesses to support their families or make an idea come true. The three also think that, in their case, being a woman worked more to their advantage than against it. We brought them together so that they could share their story with us.

Computers already know how to paint, write poetry, compose music and come up with jokes without assistance. They aren’t able to break molds like the great masters, but machines can be creative, explains Ramón López de Mántaras in the book The Next Step. Exponential Life, which can be download for free on the website of BBVA’s OpenMind project.

Edmund Hillary was the first person to reach the top of Mount Everest in 1953 - a feat that brought him worldwide fame, but also changed his life. His relationship with the mountains was so intense that he once said, “It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.” When asked about his hobbies, Ricardo Forcano (Zaragoza, 1977) answers right away, “the mountain.” It´s probably the best place to order ideas, propose new challenges and work as a team. All those experiences can be applied to the business world, and that’s what Ricardo Forcano is doing as head of the Talent and Culture area of BBVA.

The earth, capital and technology have been the strategic factors in the industrial revolutions that have taken place from the Neolithic period to the 20th Century. However, in the fourth industrial revolution, which is now underway, individual talent will be the key to success.

BBVA was one of the companies distinguished by the Másfamilia Foundation for “its long-term commitment to the preservation of work-life values in its business culture.” The financial institution earned the EFR quality stamp ten years ago. The Foundation awards the EFR stamp to recognize companies that promote work-family-personal life balance, equality and diversity.

While the U.S. consolidated its role as an international power in the mid-20th Century, New York overtook Paris as the global epicenter of Western art. The paintings of the new American artists who conquered the world -Pollock, Rothko, de Kooning and Motherwell- can be seen at the Guggenheim Museum’s exhibit in Bilbao, Abstract Expressionism, sponsored by the BBVA Foundation.

Dark matter is not black. It is, actually, invisible. It is also everywhere – it is estimated to account for 27% of the universe’s total mass-energy density – but we cannot see it because it is too cold and does not emit any radiation. It is completely different from anything we know. And to find it, an invisible light is needed: Cherenkov’s radiation. It is no wonder that the telescopes trying to detect it are called MAGIC.

El Bosco. El jardín de los sueños (Bosch: The Garden of Earthly Delights) will premier in Mexican theaters this weekend. Directed by José Luis López Linares and sponsored by the BBVA Foundation, the documentary will also be released in the U.S. on September 24th.

Almost 1.2 billion people – one out of every seven people in the planet – traveled abroad in 2015. And 37% of these international tourists chose their vacations based on the cultural offering of the country of destination: monuments, museums, festivals and folklore compete with the beaches and the sun over a business that moves billions of dollars every year.

A simple cell phone can make a huge difference in the lives of the billions of people who live in the world’s least developed countries. There, apps aren’t only resources for work and entertainment, but tools to improve the health, security and income of the poorest.

2016 is the year of Cervantes, Shakespeare and Hieronymus Bosch. These three masterminds are a hot conversation topic all over the world. Those who don’t want to wait for the Bosch exhibit in the Prado Museum in May, sponsored by the BBVA Foundation – or who need to refresh their knowledge can, thanks to these four mobile apps.

US mathematician Robert Wilson, honored with BBVA Foundation’s Frontiers of Knowledge Award for “his pioneering contributions to the analysis of strategic interactions when economic agents have limited and imperfect information about their environment.”

Finnish ecologist Ilkka Hanski has been distinguished with the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Ecology and Conservation Biology for opening up a new branch of ecology – metapopulation biology – which combines field work and mathematical modeling to predict how species will be affected by the pressing problem of habitat fragmentation by human action.

Physicists Stephen Hawking and Viatcheslav Mukhanov have been distinguished with the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Basic Sciences for discovering that quantum fluctuations triggered the formation of galaxies formed during the first phase of the evolution of the Universe. The jury underscored that this insight, now borne out by space telescope observations, is a fundamental result in cosmology.

U.S. mathematician Stephen Arthur Cook has been granted the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Information and Communication Technologies category for his important role in identifying what computers can and cannot solve efficiently. His work has had a dramatic impact on all fields where complex computations are crucial.

Veerabhadran Ramanathan has been distinguished with the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the category of Climate Change for his discovery of non-CO2 greenhouse gases and pollutants resulting from human activity that have a tremendous impact on the Earth’s climate. Acting to prevent emissions of these gases is feasible and would yield short-term results, contributing to the fight against global warming.

Simplicity and human scale, technology and sustainability are the defining traits of BBVA new corporate headquarters, designed by Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron. The authors of the Beijing Bird’s Nest or the redesign of the Tate Modern in London, drew their inspiration from the towns of the past, cities - paraphrasing Pritzker prize winner Jacques Herzog - “that work and are built for people", to project a modern campus where architecture and technology are put at the service of people.

Old, medieval or Roman towns inspired Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron’s design of the new BBVA headquarters in Madrid, which they describe as a “workplace for the future.”