 Natro, welcome. Great to see you. Thank you. Are you all set? Yeah. Fantastic. So the stage is yours Natro, take it away. Thank you very much. Hello everyone, it is a pleasure to be here with you in one of the biggest tech festivals and events in the world. Today we will talk about technology and I call my presentation Tech 2030. And today I want to reflect about what should be the role of technology for this decade. And let me begin by introducing myself. I don't want to talk about myself, just give you a quick introduction so you can know me better. I'm Natro Rivera. I'm the CEO and co-founder of The Overview Effect. The Overview Effect is a new company designed to solve social and environmental challenges using technologies. We help organizations to integrate positive impact at the core of their business model and we also help them to innovate and design new solutions that create value for the business and solve social and environmental challenges. The Overview Effect is a company that is supported and invested by Paradigma Digital and by the Indra Group and together with them we're creating an ecosystem to scale technology and to use it to create positive impact. And today it's a pleasure to be here with you in Big Things Conference, one of the biggest tech events and here we're joining people from all over the world talking about technology, the impact it has on society, the impact it has on the planet and in our day today. And today the conference also introduced a new concept that is tech awakening. So let me begin by introducing this concept and the first thing that I did when I was preparing this presentation was to ask myself where is tech awakening or where is the tech awakening that we need? So this is the question, so when you have a question like this you go to the dictionary of course and I found a definition. And when you go to the dictionary here we found the Cambridge Dictionary. You see awakening and the meaning is the act of starting to understand something or feel something. So if today we're talking about technology and we're talking about our realization in terms of technology what should be our tech awakening for today? And for me the answer is very clear and I think that it's important that today as we are joining this event to understand what should be this awakening in terms of technology, what should be the realization, what should be the wake up that we need in terms of technology. And for me it's very clear and it's this sentence technology is a means and not an end. And probably you've heard this sentence several times this kind of a statement but today that we are here today that we are talking about technology and the impact in the society and our planet I think that is more important than ever to understand this sentence. And for me this is the tech awakening that we need to today to understand that technology is a means and not an end. Because nowadays in the media at the office in our day to day we always hear sentence like digital transformation, digital products, lots of employment due to automation and when we're talking like this about technology we forgot that technology doesn't exist by itself. Technology is a tool that should be at the service of humanity. So it's very important to understand this in order to use all the power of technology to solve the social and environmental challenges we are facing and to dedicate all the investment, all the power, all the knowledge to the things that are more important for our future. And with this reflection in terms of what I think that should be the tech awakening for today when we're talking about what are our priorities where should we put our efforts in terms of technology I think that is really useful to have this analysis of global challenges that we are facing. Here we have different organizations based in scientific research that are analyzing the problems and the challenges that we are facing as humanity and in our planet. Institutions like the Estocon Resilience Center, like the World Economic Forum or like United Nations. And here we see a framework that is called the planetary boundaries. Planetary boundaries are studying the limits in terms of impact that humans are created in the environment. And the Estocon Resilience Center is clear that we are surpassing different limits, limits in terms of planetary boundaries that the loss of biodiversity or the increase in average temperature due to climate change. Then we have the World Economic Forum. The World Economic Forum every year they publish what they call the risk or the global risk that we are facing and they identify different risks and they classify them based on the likelihood to happen and the impact that they can create in our world. And here we found different risks like infectious disease something that we are living nowadays, like nuclear crisis, like climate change, like loss of diversity. So there are like the most important risks that we are facing as humanity. And then we have the Sustainable Development Goals by United Nations that most of you probably know. Here we are talking about our global agenda for 2030. That's why I call this presentation Tech 2030. And here we have different challenges, more social, environmental and economic challenges that we need to overcome and that we need to put our efforts related with different fields, with social, environmental and economic aspects. We are talking about global problems like gender quality, like climate change, like the loss of biodiversity, like access to education, like access to rent, like access to food. So different kind of challenges and this is really our global agenda. So if today we are talking about technology, I think there is nothing more important than to use the power of technology to deal with these global priorities. And this is the tech awakening that I want to share with you today. But the question is why technology? I mean we have a lot of different problems. We are talking about climate change, about gender equality, about poverty, about education. There are a lot of challenges in our world, in our planet, in our society. But why technology is a tool that we need to use to solve these problems? And the answer for me is very clear. I think that there is no force in our economic system, in our society and technology in order to achieve the transformation that we need nowadays. Mainly for two different reasons. Technology can create scalable changes that can be global. And secondly because technology can do it in an speed that is the speed that we need to face these problems that we are facing. So in terms of scalability and in terms of speed there is nothing like technology in order to solve global problems. Here in terms of scalability of change, this is the first argument. We have an equation that is proposed by Barry Comner from Harvard University and it's a simple way to understand what are the variables that condition the impact in the environment. And these variables it depends on the population, the affluence and the technology. We are talking about population, we are talking about the number of people we are living in our planet. We are talking about the affluence, we are talking about the resource that we need is of us to cover our basis needs and to have the life that we have today. And then when we are talking about technology we are talking about how can we produce these resources in a more efficient way. So if we understand this equation within that technology and we see that technology is part of the equation so it's critical the change that it can create in our world. Because as you can imagine it is not easy to deal with population because it is not something easy as you might agree with me to try to move this part of the formula. Then we have the affluence when we are talking about how can we consume less, how can we reduce our needs or how can we consume in a different way. So we are talking about change in terms of habits and then we have the technology. So for this reason when we are talking about problems like climate change it's critical that the scalability that technology offers you in order to face this problem. And then the speed of change. Here we have a graph from the World Bank, a report called Digital Dividends and here we see the access to different services like education, like water, like electricity and we also have in green the different access to internet or digital technologies related services like the internet, mobile phones, etc. So here what is clear is that the technology developments in developing countries that the graph represents the access to these services in developing countries are growing so fast and in 20 years they have achieved the same percentage of the population of other things like education, like sanitation, like health. So it's clear that when technology arrives in a developing country when technology arrives in some place, in some use case the scale and the speed of change that can create is critical. Let's be clear when we are talking about these global problems time is really really important and when we are talking about Tech 2030 as I call this presentation is because these changes we needed to do it in this decade. So scalability and speed are critical in terms of using technology and in terms of solving global problems. And this is something that is recognized by big institutions, institutions like United Nations. As you can see here, United Nations has recognized in their last sustainable development goals report the importance of using technology to achieve this global agenda and they say that we need a better use of data, harnessing science, technology and innovation with a greater focus on digital transformation in order to achieve this agenda. So it's clear that we have a consensus even with the big institutions that are trying to promote changes in our ecosystems. And we believe that we are at the beginning of what is called the tech for good revolution. I'm sure that you've heard this statement not this term several times but we think that we are still at the beginning of this revolution. Here you can see different papers, reports from institutions like the World Bank and the World Economic Forum like United Nations. And here everyone is talking about this, everyone is talking about how to use technology to create a social and environmental impact. But we believe that we are just at the beginning of this revolution and the big projects using technology to improve our growth are yet to come. So with all this context and with everything that we've been talking today we made ourselves, and I made myself one question two years ago of how to design a company to use technology to solve this challenge. And that's why we've created the Overview Effect. At the Overview Effect we have a clear purpose as a company that we enable the potential of different organizations, especially companies in the private sector, to create solutions for the greatest challenge of our planet by combining the power of business, science and technology. With this purpose we are helping organizations across different sectors to integrate sustainability and positive impact at the core of their business model and we also help them to innovate and to design new products as a service that solves social and environmental challenges but also create value for the company at the same time. But I'm not here to talk about myself or about my company but I think that it's interesting to share with you how we approach the solutions to global challenges because as you can see here, this is our organization we are organized by missions, what we call our missions and we have six different missions, social equity, health and wellbeing, prosperity, circular economy missions, sustainable cities and climate and biodiversity. As you know, normally in consultancy companies are specialized based on industries so you have a lot of knowledge in banking, insurance, telecom, whatever you have a person who leads this area, who is an expert in understanding that business and providing service to that business. But we did this in the opposite way. At the Overview Effect we believe that the planet is our only client. So if we believe that the planet is our only client we need to organize our company based on the challenge to solve not in industries or technology. So that's where we have created our missions in which we cover all different challenges related to social and environmental impact. At these missions are related by people who are experts in this field people who understand the social and environmental challenges we are facing and we try to combine this knowledge, this deep knowledge with innovation, with business and with technology. And the thing that I want to share with you today is how we decide in which challenge we should put our efforts in order to develop solutions in terms of technology to solve this challenge because this agenda as you can imagine is huge. We are talking about problems like gender equality, like access to food like poverty, like access to water, health and wellbeing mental health, education, third-party economy biodiversity protection, climate change, cities. So it's huge and in the system of development goals there are 17 development goals and there are more than 160 targets. So we need to understand where technology is more needed to solve this challenge. And in order to address these questions we have created our own methodology that is based on data and is based on different research in which we try to understand where technology is more needed. And in order to do that we consider three different variables. First of all, the urgency of the problem. If we are talking about positive impact we need to focus on the problems that are more urgent for our planet. So here we are considering the SDG index from United Nations in which you can analyze the evolution of the different indicators related with social and environmental challenges. So the more urgent is the problem the more important is the technology act upon that problem. Then we have the interests of the private sector. We need the private sector to solve this challenge. This is not something about altruism. This is not something that depends on NGOs or governments. Private sector will play a critical role in terms of sustainability. So here what we are trying to measure is the interest that the private sector has in solving the different challenges. And we do this by considering the global compact by United Nations in which they analyze the reporting of the different corporations in terms of sustainable development goals. So we can understand in which challenge our company is more interested. And then the third variable is the market opportunity. Here we need to understand the sustainability and positive impact is also a market opportunity. Here we are not talking about something that you need to do as a responsibility but it's also an opportunity for your business model. So we try to understand where is the market opportunity of these different challenges. And in order to do this we are using a study and a research that is made by the Better Business Development Commissions in which they are considering the opportunity and the economic opportunity that is more than 12 trillion dollars of achieving the sustainable development goals. So here we are considering the urgency of the problem, the interest of companies and the interest of the private sector and the market opportunity achieved of the different challenges. Combining all this data from UNSTAS, from UL Global Compact and from the Better Business Development Commission we are choosing what should be our effort in terms of technology development. And here, as I told you, we have four missions. We have six different missions. Let me explain. Every mission has the name like social equity mission. They have what we call the mission area. Mission area is like different challenge that are within any of the missions and then we have what we call challenge. So that concrete challenge within the mission that we need to solve. So here, we have some results of this analysis. First of all, you can see some interest facts. For example, a mission related with health and well-being or through cryo-economy offers a greater opportunity. You know the colors here. They represent the variables that I've just explained, the relationship of the problem, the interest of the private sector and the market opportunity. So here we see the challenge like health and well-being or through cryo-economy offers greater opportunity in terms of developed solutions to create positive impact. For example, social equity. Here we see that there is not so high and maybe that means that it's difficult to connect this kind of challenge with the private sector. But obviously we need to put effort on that anyway. Then we move to what we call mission area. So in social equity, we have a mission area with different things like access to water, like poverty, like role of the population. And here we're trying to understand inside the mission and within the mission what are the areas that we need to focus. So here we find different insights, of course, related with health and well-being. For example, improving access to technology for people over 65 years old. Here in the social cryo-economy, we're thinking things like promoting a new sustainable way of producing and consuming resources or how can we reduce waste and reuse waste. So this is key areas that we see that are great opportunities in terms of developing solutions. And then we have the challenge. So if we want one step ahead, we have the challenge, mission, mission area, and then the challenge. And here we find concrete things where we are working to create solutions. Here we differentiate things like guaranteeing healthy eating habits for people. So it's a great opportunity to help people and to help companies to design new healthy products. And it's a huge opportunity as you can see in the graph. Then we have providing service to people over 65 years old. Here we have a lot of opportunities in terms of mitigating climate change, market opportunities, about rethinking packaging and about promoting a new different through cryo-economy system in which you can give access to a product rather than give the property of a product so you reduce the use of resources. So with all this analysis what we are trying to understand is to where technology is more needed and we are trying to identify problems where the problem is a new problem where the companies have an interest and where it is also a market opportunity. And I think that the best way to understand this is to see it in action and see our missions in action. And this is an actual, a current example, something that we are working on. Here you see our mission. As you know, this is the mission, submission, and the challenge. Here we are talking about climate and biodiversity mission. In our climate and biodiversity missions we differentiate three mission areas. There are climate action, everything related with reducing emissions and transition to zero carbon. Then we have ecosystem restoration, everything related with the biodiversity, the protection of our terrestrial ecosystem and then we have oceans and water, everything related to protection of marine ecosystems and guaranteeing an efficiency use of water. So here we take a step back into ecosystem restoration and we understand what it's called the restoration of degraded ecosystems. There is something that is really, really, really important. So we go a little deep in this subject and we understand what are the barriers that are not improving this challenge. And here we found different things, things like that the agents when we are talking about restoration projects are not connected. They are not connected to each other. So it's difficult to companies that they are promoting restoration projects. They are setting their emissions through solutions based in nature. It's difficult to connect with agents because companies want to do projects. Agents are on the ground, shakers in those projects and this connection is fully clear. Then we found another different barrier when we were talking about the monitoring of this project, the KPIs. They are mostly focused on CO2 absorption but in terms of restoration we need also to consider different challenges and KPIs especially KPIs related with the biodiversity, KPIs related with the socioeconomic impact in that place. So we need to consider more KPIs and then we found another barrier that is difficult to do this monitoring and this KPIs. And nowadays it is not easy to have this measurement. Really automated, really digitized. So we are doing a lot of assumptions and we are not considering the real impact that these kind of projects are having in the ecosystem and in our society. So once we analyze a challenge here you see our mission and we try to innovate and to design a new solution. A new solution that could be a product that could be a service. And here we are designing a new solution to solve the challenge that is called Renatura. Renatura is a platform for ecosystem restoration in Spain. And here with Renatura what we imagine is a world where all these agents, companies, NGOs, organizations that are on the ground are using this project can be fully connected. So you can interact with them and with Renatura we imagine a world where the KPIs and the monitoring of the project is fully digitized, is automated and in which you can use all the different technologies like internal things, technologies like image recognition to better understand the impact that these kind of projects are having in the ecosystem. So here technology plays a critical role and help us to connect these agents and it will also help us to analyze and to have data of our ecosystems like never before. So this is a great example of how we choose a global problem with technologies needed and how can we develop and design a new solution to solve this challenge. Here we see the project we want and we imagine Renatura as a map as a global map and a digital map in Spain in which companies can go to the map cancel their project, they want to do some restoration project related with the value chain in a particular place so they ask different organizations, ok I want to do a project like this this project generate an order and NGOs and different organizations can apply to this project so they are fully connected and they work in the project together in the same platform and then what we want to do is to put all the technology at the service of the project so the project can be completely, the monitoring of the project can be completely digitized, can be completely automated and we as a society can have more information about the real impact of all the efforts that companies are doing in terms of restoration of the graduate ecosystems. So here is a project that we are still starting to work on this project, I wanted to share with you and I of course ask you if any one of you want to have a conversation about this project want to be part of the solution please have a chat with me and of course for me this is critical, we need to think in a systemic way, if we are talking about global problems like climate change we need to be open we need to use open innovation we need to design with systems thinking in mind and for us it is critical to open this kind of project to experts, to different companies to different technologies so it is part of our DNA and to end this presentation I would like to finish with a message for action a message for action in how to rethink technology for positive impact at the overview of aid we differentiate three ways of using technology for positive impact replacement, optimization and redesign when we are talking about replacement, we are talking about technologies that can completely substitute or replace a manual process reducing the use of resources for example digital signatures then we have optimization, when we are talking about optimization, we are talking about technologies that make a process more efficient reducing the use of resources for example algorithms or machine learning algorithms using the production process or logistic process that help us to reduce greenhouse emissions in this value chain and then we have redesign when we are talking about redesign, we are talking about technologies that can completely redesign our economic system and different business model a great example of technology that can redesign a business model is in terms of mobility for example what happens if you give access to a car rather than the property of the car you are using the same car so you serve resources between different people so you reduce the use of resources between different communities where technology can not only replace or optimize but redesign and reimagine new business model and among the three ways of using technology to generate positive impact redesign is the one who has a great power for transformations in our economic system and as I want to finish this presentation with a message for action I want you, all people working in technology that we are together here talking about the impact of technology with those tenability solutions we need to connect the dots we need to use creativity we need to combine people from different fields of knowledge and for me it's critical that everyone of you will think in how can we combine technology positive impact and business and when we are able to connect these dots and generate technology solutions that create value for the business but also create positive impact in our planet I think that is what this revolution can transform our society and in order to end this presentation I would like to finish with an inspiring story a story that gave us our name as a company that is the Overview Effect the Overview Effect is a cognitive change of consciousness reported by some astronauts during a spaceflight when they sit there from space they change their perspective of the world forever and when they are back from the missions they take care of this blue dot that is the planet like never before Paul Sagan who is one of the most famous science communicator and astrophysic is one of those person that reading the most about the Overview Effect and I would like to end this presentation with a quote from him there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human consciousness than the distant image of our tiny world it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot the only home we have ever known thank you very much sure thank you so much for that talk I really enjoyed that it was such a polished talk the content was amazing but of course also visually it looked so good so congratulations on that and I love the story behind the name of the Overview Effect didn't Jeff Bezos have the same epiphany when he had his flight recently I think he said the very same thing that the world looked very different from up there and it gave him a sense of scale and purpose so now I can give you the but and here it comes you're presenting technology as the solution to so many important challenges that we face right now but some people would argue that technology is precisely the reason why we are in the mess that we're in wasn't it the technological advances initiated in the industrial revolution that have sped climate change and basically led to most of the problems that we have right now isn't it a bit ironic that you're presenting a solution that was actually the problem it's almost like you are a pusher offering more heroin to the drug addict it's a good question it depends on what kind of technology as you can see in this presentation we are talking a lot about digital technologies digital technologies are not the technologies that come from the industrial revolution that are maybe one of the reasons that we are here today what I think is that technology as I've tried to explain in the presentation at the end we say technology is guilty for everything that's happening technology is a problem technology is not the problem, technology is not the solution technology is at the service of humanity I think that is our responsibility to use this power I mean we are investing in a lot of companies, in a lot of products in a lot of technologies, startups that are using technologies like internal things like blockchain, like artificial intelligence I think that the important thing is to ask what is the purpose of using this technology maybe they are causing maybe they are not having all we have a cost of opportunity of not using this technology to solve this challenge so I think that in terms of digital technologies technologies that we are having since 15 years old or something like that is where we have a huge opportunity to better understand our ecosystems, to better design solutions and that we need to use all this power with this purpose I think we are all becoming increasingly aware about climate change and we are starting to feel guiltier in daily activities flight shame for example we feel guilty now when we go on a plane but on the other hand you are presenting solutions I know we are talking about digital solutions but technology as the saviour couldn't that distract perhaps from other initiatives that we should be concentrating on like less waste, less consumption is there a risk in other words that people start to have less urgency about climate change precisely because they think that technology will come and save the day yeah I'm not a technology solutionist, I mean there are a lot of people who believe that there is always will be a technology that could save us I don't know it will be the hydrogen or the nuclear power there are people saying like the technology is the solution I don't think that, I think that if we see the equation when we are talking about environmental impact we are talking about technology and how can we be more efficient using resources and also about change in terms of habits so it's not that we will, that technology will save us but we also need to combine these technology solutions with new changing habits, with education, with cultural change to understand the role that nature plays in our world so I think that we need to combine these technology developments with more conscious consumers with more consumer citizens and I think that is critical to change our habits and to understand what we can do independently from the technologies that could be developed I noticed that formula I think it was Barry Coronet did you say the impact formula, I thought that was very interesting and that was the only time that you mentioned what I think is possibly the elephant in the room here which is population growth so perhaps you could expand a little bit on that and how you see technology and population growth perhaps coming together I think that population in that equation the equation is not rocket science it's a very simple way to understand the variables that condition our environmental impact but I think that population maybe is the most difficult one to deal with because we are talking about freedom we are talking about how many people we are in the world where I think that in 50 years we will be 10 billion in our planet and we are seeing different people from different countries that are accessing to more food, accessing to more energy not only that we are growing in population but we are also growing in terms of economic activity so the challenge is huge if we understand that the population is growing and it will be 10 billion so what I think is that it's a combination of the three different formulas because I don't believe that in the short term we or governments could act on something like population because it attacks freedom or things that are not easy to handle what are some of the specific technological solutions that you have seen that have most impressed you perhaps you could outline a few of them I think that in terms of technology I think that there is the combination of different technologies internal themes is helping us to understand the state of our ecosystems and nature I mean nature until recent years now we have more information, more sensors more opportunities to measure the needs of our planet so this is critical because we have more information to take decisions in what our ecosystem, species people also needs so I think that in terms of things is a huge opportunity then with this data what you need to do is to combine this data and to create collective intelligence model here we can talk about artificial intelligence so I'm seeing great developments in terms of machine learning and artificial intelligence to decarbonize different companies, the economy how can we take decisions to understand we should put our money to invest to improve our transition to a lower carbon economy and I think there are different technologies like blockchain technology which is difficult sometimes to understand but blockchain technology also creates an incredible opportunity in terms of connect agents in a different way okay, let me just ask you a few quick questions from some of the audience Diego here says a very interesting approach, he congratulates you and he wonders if you could explain how this approach incorporates the circular interactions among all the challenges that are clearly not isolated the circular interactions yes I will try to understand the questions but what I think is that when you are trying to develop a solution it's something that we try to always think like that, that is what is called net impact sometimes when you are in innovation when you are trying to create a new solution you can achieve in a solution that can create positive impact in a way but it can also create negative impact in another way in terms of social this is very common when we are talking about for example service economy giving access to a product rather than giving the property of the product and this is a logistic cycle so you are reducing the use of a product but you are increasing the greenhouse emissions so I think that these interactions if I understand the question we need to be considering the design of a new product right, Nacho in general are you optimistic? yes, I am completely optimistic especially for the role of the private sector I think that sustainability cannot depend on government on NGOs they play a critical role and they are key players but we need companies we need companies to understand that the future of their business model needs to be a sustainable business model and I think I am seeing really optimistic change in companies and I think that we need to move from the strategic and the long-term vision to the innovation and execution well that is really great to hear, I feel a little bit better so thank you so much Nacho Rivera we have run out of time so once again thank you so much for coming