Juan-Miguel Villar Mir, Honorary Member of the Spanish Royal Academy of Doctors

Today, the Spanish Royal Academy of Doctors has inducted Juan-Miguel Villar Mir, chairman of the Villar Mir Group and OHL, during a ceremony held in the auditorium at the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport’s offices in San Bernardo.

Juan-Miguel Villar Mir received the Medal and title of Honorary Academician from Royal Academy Chairman Luis Mardones, with the encomium presented by Jaime Lamo de Espinosa, Full Academy Member from the Engineering Section.

After expressing his appreciation to all the members of the Royal Academy for his induction as Honorary Academician and recalling the 98-year history of this institution, Juan-Miguel Villar Mir gave a speech addressing the topic of The company at the service of society.

The OHL chairman’s speech embraced a conscientious analysis of the evolution of the world, with its transformations in the fields of science, technology companies and the marketplace. Juan-Miguel Villar Mir referred to the limits of the State’s role and the relationship between the company and its social environment. He addressed the traditional criteria in teaching business administration and the emergence of new concepts in business undertakings such as globalization and innovation. After alluding to Civil Liability under Spanish Law and to the new Corporate Social Responsibility, which have added new conditions and objectives to business management, he concluded with some final considerations on serving others.

When addressing these topics, Juan-Miguel Villar Mir stressed that “the whole of history has proven that mere scientific understanding is incapable of improving the well-being of humanity”, and that “only when there is an upsurge in the technological application of science, only when there is an upsurge in engineering, has world history witnessed progress in well-being”.

He likewise emphasized “the clear supremacy of the marketplace as a condition of freedom and driving force behind well-being, since the greater levels of well-being only have been made possible during regimes of true economic freedom that recognize the indubitable role and supremacy of liberty, individual initiative, private property and the market”.

“In this scope of market economy -he added- there have been unprecedented instances of growth; a growth that would have otherwise been impossible were it not for the entrepreneur, who is the prime mover of income, prosperity and employment, directly contributing to the generation of growth and well-being; and driven by the emergence of great new concepts such as globalization and innovation”.

The OHL chairman reiterated that “with democracy in Spain, we have already substantially achieved the prodigious objectives of liberty, justice and peace”. However, turning to the aspirations for greater levels of prosperity, he warned that “to attain them, the key and prevailing concept lies within an increase in productivity, an increase in production per individual, which is solely possible with more effective businesses”.

Globalization and innovation

When addressing globalization, innovation and the current economic crisis, the OHL chairman spoke about our country in that “it is imperative for Spain to create the value that will enable the country to first consolidate its level of well-being so as to then return to growth in the future. And this, in an open economy such as Spain’s, can only be achieved with more products and services capable of competing in the inevitable global marketplace”.

“Spain -he remarked- is facing one of the greatest economic challenges of the last few decades, which has compelled us to adopt important structural reforms, which must be accompanied by measures conceived to encourage job creation and shore up the foundations of our future economic, social and business development”.

“The impact of the financial crisis, the efforts of tax consolidation and the significant cost of bearing the elevated unemployment rate for our society cannot make us forget that the social well-being of the country and its future economic development and growth are linked to education, capacity to generate scientific and technological knowledge in addition to innovations and the necessity for business leadership in R&D as the driving force of change and progress in the context of accelerated transformation and intense international competition”.

“In 2008 -he added-, the erosion in the competitiveness of the Spanish economy during the previous five years only underscores the urgency to take on an ambitious project contemplating measures designed to promote the generation of scientific and technological knowledge, its application and pervasion throughout our productive fabric, and to buttress the generation and adoption of key innovations for modernizing the country as a whole”.

“The Spanish economy -he emphasized- must improve its competitiveness. It should be built upon more long-term solid and sustainable bases by committing to competitive industry geared toward exportation. Our industries continue specializing in mature medium-low technology sectors whose competitiveness lies in the price, in contrast with sectors that are technologically more advanced and whose competitiveness lies within the singularity of the product. Thus, in our country, the evolution of production costs is increasingly and unfortunately the primary element determining our export capacity”.

“In order for the country to become more competitive, its companies must be capable of generating more added value. And innovation has been recognized as the way to create more added value”.

In this regard, Juan-Miguel Villar Mir holds that “the scarce innovative activity existing in our country even during periods of prosperity is one of the causes explaining the lack of total productivity contribution of the factors to the economic development of Spain. Regarding innovation, Spain differs from other developed countries because of the smaller scope and relatively little weight of its private sector compared with the public sector”.

He backed this statement reiterating that internal spending on R&D activities in 2012 represented 1.30% of the GDP according to the most recent figures published by the Spanish National Institute of Statistics, and that this figure continues under the almost 2% average of the European Union and at a distance from the 3% in the United States of America and 3.5% in Japan.

Toward a more competitive and international industry

To advance toward more competitive industry and greater international projection, and considering the structure of the Spanish productive fabric, which is marked by the excessive weight of small and medium-sized enterprises and their specialization in sectors of little added value, Juan-Miguel Villar Mir proposes to continue encouraging investments in R&D, promoting the creation of technology-based companies, increasing the incorporation of technology in companies within traditional sectors, and committing firmly to integrating innovation into Spanish society, its educational system, scale of values and scientific culture.