Panda Security Insight

Traditionally, at Panda Security our technological innovation has set us apart from our competitors and has been the cornerstone for our competitiveness. Throughout our 20-year history, we have reinvested 30% of our turnover in innovation, and this has made us a company that commands wide respect among users, the industry, analysts, opinion leaders, etc.

It’s no easy task to base the culture of a company on radical innovation, as it requires having a series of determining factors in place in the corporate environment, or, if they don’t exist, creating the necessary framework. Such experiences vary in line with the country in which the company operates: In countries where there is a strong technological tradition along with governmental understanding and support for innovation, any company that undertakes these activities with intelligence will probably be successful. In countries without such a technological tradition (as is the case in Spain), this task can become more complex, although, as demonstrated by Panda, it is still possible to succeed.

The human assets of a company represent the cornerstone for successful innovation. They must be fully committed to the project and have the initiative required to drive the engine of innovation. To support this, the country where these types of activities are developed should, in my opinion, have policies that incentivize capital investment in several ways:

- On the one hand, favoring capital investment so companies have sufficient financial capacity and muscle: policies incentivizing investment -not just towards the raising of ‘national’ capital, but also attracting international investment.

- A fiscal framework that makes it possible to attract talent from outside and adopt competitive stock option policies, special fiscal conditions, etc.  In our case, security is a specialized niche market, and it is not always easy to find people who fit the profile we need to perform this type of work.  It is important we have a framework that is competitive with other markets in this respect.

- Thirdly, also as an engine of innovation, we need to create an environment where future generations are suitably trained and competitive within our own country, driving research and development with measures, grants and specific training programs, with a dual purpose: on the one hand generating wealth through the creation of talent in the country itself, and on the other, preventing a brain drain by enabling this talent to flower in its own country.

These policies would help contribute to the success of entrepreneurs in any country, yet they can never replace the key to success of any entrepreneur: having an innovative idea and executing it effectively in the right-sized market. They can’t replace it, but they offer significant help.

In many countries in southern Europe, we still have a long way to go, and our governments seem to be focused more on short-term policies -with one eye on their own personal horizons (the four-year term in office…)- than on defining policies and structural reforms that would guarantee the competitiveness of our markets and companies in the long-term…

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