It´s been a year filled with intense activity: more than 800 startups from 72 countries competed for the first prize in the ninth edition of the BBVA Open Talent competition. The winner was Change, an Israeli artificial intelligence startup that received its prize  - and the accompanying 50,000 euros - at the BBVA Open Summit last week in Madrid.

For the banking industry, the digital revolution has brought new technologies and new types of customers and competitors. But it has also created a new set of ethical responsibilities regarding cybersecurity and the use of data. José Manuel González-Páramo, BBVA’s Executive Director, talked about those ethics, and the opportunities and challenges of digitization, during a speech at the Atrium of the Gentiles, a cultural dialogue organized by the engineering school ICADE and the Ecumenical Social Forum of Madrid. He said these ethics will require acting from a triple perspective: educational, business and regulatory

BBVA Group Executive Chairman Francisco González presided over the first edition of the Spanish Computer Science Society (SCIE) – BBVA Foundation Research Awards. These accolades recognized the work of six young Ph.D. recipients who are conducting high-level research in Spain.

You have to move quickly to bring the future within reach. That’s why I am at Money 20/20 in Las Vegas. It’s an event full of young startups and transformative ideas that will change and evolve rapidly. They discover and understand what needs to change in the world of financial services and use technology to innovate. This is where what will be the next big thing in banking is being discussed.

Big data is much more than a trend that´s being studied in the innovation departments of cutting-edge companies. Some multinationals have already changed forever, thanks to the strategic use of data.

Using Docker in the deployment of software in productive systems solves many problems related to agility and the normalization of these processes. But, like all technology that breaks with prior IT processes, it generates new challenges or requires different solutions for persisting problems. One of those is the management of secrets.

Last week BBVA announced that AI-based personal money manager startup Change had won its Open Talent Global award for best fintech idea. Change, an Israeli outfit that works in the U.S. and Canada, uses artificial intelligence to help customers keep track of their money, giving them a nudge via an SMS when they are overspending.

The objective is not an easy one to achieve: making sure that the products that reach the market are the ones customers need and demand. The task is even more complicated if production must be speeded up, in order to reach the market before the competition. Tech companies were pioneers in facing this challenge; they did so by using agile methods, a way of working that has played a key role in the success of companies like Google and Spotify, and which BBVA has made a fundamental tool in accelerating its digital transformation.

Alliances between startups and established companies are increasingly used to foment corporate innovation. Entrepreneurs and executives offer us the keys to building a successful relationship.

One billion people experiencing firsthand all that virtual reality has to offer that’s Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s ambitious goal. Soon, he will launch a unique new tool to help achieve it: a pair of virtual reality glasses called Oculus Go, which will sell at a relatively affordable price and work without a computer or smartphone.