Over the past year, life has given us a new opportunity to reorder our priorities as individuals and as a society. We have become aware of our weakness, that we own nothing and that we dominate the world far less than we thought we did. Many of us have looked, with even more admiration, at science and industry. And we have also perceived with uneasiness the lack of capacity of management in complex circumstances with high uncertainty (with VUCA characteristics: Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity), as well as the limitations in our capacity of work in team with people of different profiles and professional and responsibility levels. Now more than ever it seems essential to bet intensely on a robust training and training professional. Last Friday we celebrated the World Entrepreneurship Day, a perfect excuse to thank and acknowledge the enormous effort of businessmen, entrepreneurs and investors who every day face courageous and risky decisions, taking risks and generating opportunities.

With regard to investors, it is important to note that a significant part of the financing that supports entrepreneurial activity, especially in the riskier stages, comes from the public sector. For example, the European SME Instrument program of Horizon 2020 alone was endowed with 2.7 billion euros. Most of this money was used to finance start-ups whose proposal value was based on know-how generated in Universities, Technology Centers or research institutes which, in turn, substantially finance their research activity with public money. Moreover, according to the European Court of Auditors, the share of public funds in European venture capital funds in the three-year period 2016-18 was 5.9 billion euros. This is a small sample of how we citizens accompany, in the distance and indirectly, the ventures that flourish in our environment. Many of us who accompany entrepreneurs more closely have a different perspective from theirs. We do not live and suffer the day to day as real as they do, but we see it very closely, suffering almost as if we were co-pilots of their projects.

One of the most famous co-drivers in motorsport was Luis Moya: a singer of curves and speeds with a mellow accent. In 1998, the memorable Moya accompanied Carlos Sainz in that fateful last test of the Rallye of England, when 500 meters before the goal the car of the man who was to be proclaimed world champion stopped - "Carlos, start it, for God's sake! A defective connecting rod (which represented 0.15% in terms of the cost of the car) had truncated that world championship for the man who is considered the best Spanish rally driver in history. A defective connecting rod! The connecting rod is a basic element for converting the longitudinal movement of the piston into a crankshaft rotation. A robust element, very studied, very well known, that exceptionally breaks, because it is known to be essential. That was an accident that could hardly have been foreseen.

However, in the entrepreneurial process, how many times are the same mistakes made? How many times have we seen confident attitudes in the face of an obvious lack of knowledge of the market or an unbalanced entrepreneurial team? Or a poor forecast of the Bursar's Office and/or excessive fixed costs? Or excessive optimism in estimating revenues? Or simply believing that the core topic is the technology and that it sells itself?

It could also be asked whether these repeated errors could be reduced by introducing rigorous methodologies and procedures similar to those applied in the automobile or aeronautical sectors, among others.

In commercial aviation, maintenance programs, procedures and checklists are carried out as if each day were the first, always taking into account the learning generated from previous errors and accidents. Because our lives depend on it. Because a failure can be a tragedy. And isn't our life in innovation and entrepreneurship?

Let us hope that, just as risk awareness has made air transportation the safest, the awareness that our future will be based on innovation and entrepreneurship will make the entrepreneurial process increasingly efficient in terms of return on investment and generation of economic activity.