I was browsing the Internet the other day when a quote by American writer Elbert Hubbard caught my attention: “There is something that is much more scarce, something finer far, something rarer than talent. It is the ability to recognize talent”. I like this idea. Every day I meet talented people, creative people verging on brilliant. Many aren’t aware of their talent and are incapable of developing it further, or, worse still, have nobody to give them the support they need. Talent is a natural gift, but without perseverance, without working on it, without a helping hand, that almost divine of qualities is mere smoke and is never realized.
We have to nurture talent, give our support from the moment we recognize it in people. We have to encourage them to leverage their talent to the full. Claudia Ochoa and Corine Ackermann are two examples of young people whose talent is evident. They’ve just won the second edition of the IE University Business Plan Challenge, a business plan competition, with a project called ‘Citizen Five.0 Travels’, an online humanitarian travel agency for students. If we provide young people with our support, we’ll never run out of reasons to be optimistic about the future.