While I glimpse Tanger from our Beachfront Innovation Hub in Zahara de los Atunes (Cádiz), I can see a fishing boat heading East.
Probably it’s a Japanese fishing boat, going back to Tuskiji, the world’s largest fish market. They come here to buy the best tuna.
They travel across the planet, (eleven thousand kilometers), looking for something unique, that only happens here in a short period of the year.
The best wild tunas school crossing from Atlantic to Mediterranean sea to spawn, it is worth it.
Like fishermen all over the world in search of the best tuna, we came here for the same reason: looking for something unique and so elusive as those tuna fishes: inspiration, and creativity usually come from this special places that are constantly changing but without losing it´s serenity.
Inspiration is the secret sauce of innovation, and by extension the secret of a meaningful life, to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now, for others it is called work, for us, in TheCUBE, it is called fun.
I enjoy observing how part of TheCUBE´s team is working on one of our radical innovation projects. They are discussing about how to test some business and service hypothesis while they drink tea in the African Wood pergola in front of the beach, the sand and the sky. We are in early February, and they are working outside, closed to the swimming pool, with the Atlantic Ocean in front. We all are in one of our “workation weeks”, a strange word we borrow from Uber a couple years ago.
Workation — a combination of work and vacation — means that employees come to TheCUBE Zahara to improve a product or customer experience, bringing together colleagues who wouldn’t normally travel together to tackle a creative project and make real business impact. “Workation” should be pretty much how the future of work will be for most of companies working in innovation.
What moves to this young team to grow and improve? How can they deliver so much quality in radical innovation projects? Probably it is a combination of Talent and Genius merged in this magical place: Zahara de los Atunes.
Schopenhauer’s central premise is that talent achieves what others cannot achieve, while genius achieves what others cannot imagine. So probably the merge of Genius and Talent is the secret key of Innovation. We are nurturing these ingredients inside TheCUBE adding our permanent obsession with another sign of our culture: Execution.
As Jack Kerouac wrote: “Genius gives birth, talent delivers”.
As I am finishing my post, the week here is coming to its end, we all know that when coming back to TheCUBE Madrid, all team members must keep their promises, and their job is not done until “the job is done”. Because at the end of the day, we created TheCUBE to enjoy things like this, a week in Zahara inspires us to deliver even better.
I don’t know why… but I am craving for Toro Sashimi…
ALBERTO RODRÍGUEZ
President of TheCUBE
