En la entrevista con Carlos Díez-Ruza, Presidente de Icon Group, con motivo del 10º aniversario de la empresa, se destaca la importancia de las personas, la delegación, el empoderamiento, y el talento polivalente en el éxito y crecimiento de la compañía.
Díez-Ruza resalta cómo Icon Group valora las ideas sobre los títulos y promueve una cultura donde el error es visto como parte del aprendizaje y el crecimiento.
A través de ejemplos concretos, como la creación de un hub de innovación y el desarrollo de un plan corporativo de calidad, se demuestra la efectividad de dar autonomía a los empleados, fomentando así la innovación y la productividad.
El liderazgo de Díez-Ruza se caracteriza por promover una visión estratégica clara, la flexibilidad, y un enfoque participativo, valorando la comunicación y el desarrollo tanto profesional como personal de los empleados.
La entrevista aborda los desafíos que enfrentan los líderes en la industria actual, como la adaptación al cambio, la innovación, y la gestión del talento, y cómo Icon Group ha respondido a estos a través de la promoción de una cultura de aprendizaje, la colaboración, y la adaptabilidad.
Se mencionan ejemplos específicos de cómo las demandas de los clientes han llevado a la creación o adaptación de modelos de negocio, como la fundación de Avanzia Pharma, y se destaca la importancia de la innovación y la omnicanalidad en el sector de la promoción a laboratorios farmacéuticos.
La entrevista también se centra en la visión estratégica del talento polivalente, subrayando cómo este enfoque se alinea con la misión y visión de Icon Group, y cómo se identifica y desarrolla este talento dentro de la organización. Se discute cómo la polivalencia del talento contribuye al desarrollo de nuevos negocios y a la mejora de procesos existentes, y las estrategias empleadas para retener a estos empleados valiosos.
Finalmente, Díez-Ruza comparte su visión futura para Icon Group, enfatizando en la formación continua, la innovación, y la adaptabilidad como claves para el crecimiento sostenible. La entrevista cierra con un mensaje de Díez-Ruza enfocado en la importancia de conocer y atender las necesidades de los clientes para asegurar el éxito futuro de Icon Group.
It’s so important to do what you love in life and to chase your dreams. I was touched to meet in Panama City a new member of the ICON family whose boyhood dream of running a health care Company has come true. I’m thrilled to welcome Felipe Ruiz to the team at ICON Group Panama, Central America and the Caribbean.
Felipe said he has always been fascinated with the health care industry. When he was a child, he even sat down with his father and wrote a business plan for starting a Company, always with Panama at the front of his mind – they were born and lived in their beloved Barranquilla, Colombia.
¨I think the most representative stage of my life was when I graduated from the University of International Professional Business, after having been a semester of final practice in Canada studying English at the business level and doing work practices in an export and import company , that experience was correlated to a sensitive stage of my life where I was very confused and did not know what to do with my life after college and I had a lot of uncertainty and fear, the experience helped me to have a little more clarity in what I wanted I started doing while on the road I was giving more answers, and that’s how I started directly with Districlinic and working with my dad, where my boss has been my mentor, my leader, my role model, my confidence, my guidance and my friend at all times, and it was the best decision I could make because thanks to your help, my mom and my sister, the path has given me the clear answer to what I want to become as a person and as a professional¨.
It is wonderful to hear about his insatiable curiosity and passion for the healthcare sector. I too have been fascinated by the sectorever since I was a small boy, looking up to the family business. Like Felipe, my dreams of owning a Company in the sector came from my personal ambitions. I even had a mentor who just happened to be called Felipe too – my grandfather, Felipe Ruza!.
¨After several years of working in the company and having graduated in Postgraduate Management of Commercial Companies, already with a strong knowledge in my area that was health, after a management of the health system, the sector, clients, suppliers , fairs, congresses all around. The most important challenge that divided my life in two was to have embarked on this great project in Panama and to have to go through what I was not used to and have to learn to be responsible and be completely independent, practically overnight because everything happened very fast, I think it has taken me everything I have lived and I continue to live to be as I am today and see things in a different way and develop as a person and as a professional in a different country¨.
Now almost 20 years later after dreaming of it for the first time, and after several years of working for my family business, Felipe has started working with ICON Group as a regional leader. Every healthcare company has the same components at the start – but what sets us apart is our people. I wish Felipe all the best in his new role and I’m really glad his dream of working in the healthcare industry has come true – and I hope we can live up to it!
¨I think that behind all this adventure all these decisions that one takes, all these experiences that are very satisfying and fruitful at the end of the day, behind all this is the emotional stability that one has, and that helps a lot the family union, the strength and family warmth you have, and most importantly the woman you have as a couple, I think and this has been the most important milestone in my life, that the couple that has one and decides to accompany you in this adventure plays the most important role in all this process because it is the only person who in the middle of the storm is looking for calm and takes you out of strong emotions, at least with me much has happened, and have met the woman that I have today as a girlfriend and which I want to make my wife someday very close, has given me the necessary strength to concentrate more on my work in my purpose and my goals, I feel that this kind of roads without a partner to support you, that forces you and with whom you e you can relieve is vital for your personal and professional development, apart from the family that you will always have them and thank God I have always had my family, and all this is part of the family union that one has, is stability to all the situations in your life is with whom you will be able to tell your whole life, and that is the most important and precious thing that a person has¨.
I was in Peru recently to announce the opening of ICON Group Peru, where we are launching a pioneering eReps platform to cover the most demanding client needs both in Peru and in Ecuador. I was thrilled to see how much progress is happening with one of our newest companies.

I’ve dreamed of having an international service healthcare corporation for many years. When you’ve always had a vision, then see it take shape after many years, it becomes thrilling all over again. There’s so many things to be excited about across the ICON Group at the moment – u-care, teknohealth, I-konekt and zaltanpharma laboratories to name just a few.
What dreams are you building? Keep working at them, and I’m sure they can turn into reality one day.
The celebration of the GohA Awards (www.gohealthawards.com), now also in LatAm, in concrete in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, got me reminiscing about when we launched the I Edition in Spain, Madrid. Everyone said we couldn’t do it. We asked: Why?
The common logic was that getting together all healthcare stakeholders wouldn’t work, because the various health segments wouldn’t work together. In the years since we had launched, this Awards to Entrepreneurship and Innovation had become a big label in Iberoamerica. We created a new forum, we created a new label.
Other major global organizations will never go for it, they naysayers reckoned. Why? We initially tried with some of them and explained how it could be a great deal for them as well as us. If it failed, they wouldn’t lose much. If it succeeded, who knows where it would lead. But nobody agreed.
First, we had to come up with a name. The inspiration came from a wellness slogan (Go Fit). People thought we couldn’t launch a new transversal healthcare brand based on a name from a recognized Spanish fitness group. Why? We did it, and people loved the name.
Finally, we had to race to get our already successful awards to the rest of Iberoamerican countries. There were all sorts of seemingly insurmountable logistics. We me tup ANDI (www.andi.com.co), explained our idea and said we needed to introduce the idea to the entire Colombia healthcare community in a few weeks. Whilst they initially thought it was impossible, Why Not? The executive directors for both the healtcare chamber and the Health Forum in Cartagena de Indias got convinced instead.
From those few inquisitive questions, and refusing to stop when we met with obstacles, we got the second major country in a row. And now we also plan for Miami to celebrate the biggest ever encounter of entrepreneurship and Innovation in life sciences soon. So next time somebody shuts your good idea down, ask first, why?
We need to support more female entrepreneurs, in this sense ICON CUBE StartUp have been doing a great work to support women initiatives, more recently, through the first Iberoamerican Transversal Awards, Go Health Awards (www.gohealthawards.com), receiving hundreds of women candidacies, 72%.
While just 15-20 per cent of single-person businesses (in average) were owned and run by women in 2014, 62 per cent of businesses funded by ICON CUBE StartUp are run by women, something we’re very proud of.
Women make up half of the world, they should also make up half of the business world. On International Women’s Day, we wanted to share our progress in this area. To celebrate our amazing female entrepreneurs event, we counted with the collaboration of iBWomen (www.ibwomen.org), in concrete to the always generous support offered by @Myriam Isabel González Navarro, Secretary General and founding partner. Maria Jesús Alonso, President at IBWomen, took the audience through the multiple goals of the non-profit association and gave a special award to Inés Juste, president of Grupo Juste (www.grupojuste.com). Inés, at the reins of the family group, shared experiences and enthusiasm of their global entrepreneurial experience and success to an audience of +400 attendees.
ICON CUBE StarUp, through the GoHA Health Awards, is attempting to tackle some of the glass ceilings that still exist in this space through events like these, and by sharing the inspiring stories of these female entrepreneurs. We spoke to many other women who of Frugl, Suzanne Noble, about how we can combat the biases still present against women in tech, and the founder of network Talented Ladies Club, about ways we can get more women into business and support their entrepreneurial activities.
Female founders have a need for better support networks and mentoring for female entrepreneurs, there is still experience discrimination and feel that confidence and fear of failure are issues that stop more women starting up.
ICON CUBE StartUp has started to adapt how they deliver their services, to encourage greater female participation, including running masterclasses for mumpreneurs mid-morning, rather than in the evening and holding specific networking events for female founders.
All this work is having an impact and helping us to edge closer to the goal of equal gender participation in entrepreneurship. All the start-ups we’ve funded since the beginning of the programme, 57 per cent have female founders. ICON CUBE StartUp is forward to seeing that number continue to rise in 2018.
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