Spanish Media Spotlight: JJ de la Torre on Disruption, Design, and the New Business Reality

In a series of interviews with leading Spanish-language business media in early 2024, JJ de la Torre spoke candidly about the forces reshaping global business — and what leaders in Spain and Latin America must do differently to stay ahead.

Speaking with Que.Madrid, JJ addressed the paradox facing many European and Latin American organizations: they are digitally aware but organizationally unready. "We have leaders who understand that transformation is necessary," he told the publication, "but very few who have designed their organizations to actually do it."

In a separate feature with Merca2.es, one of Spain's most-read business and marketing portals, JJ expanded on the relationship between brand, design, and organizational performance. He argued that the Spanish business community — traditionally strong in relationship-based commerce — has a distinctive opportunity to lead through what he calls 'human-centered transformation': reinventing operations and business models without losing the cultural intelligence that distinguishes Spanish and Latin American organizations from their Anglo-Saxon counterparts.

"The risk for Spanish-speaking markets is not that they adopt transformation too slowly," JJ said in the Merca2 interview. "The risk is that they adopt the wrong model — imported wholesale from Silicon Valley — without adapting it to their own strengths."

These themes — the need for culturally intelligent transformation, design-led organizational change, and the dangers of uncritical technology adoption — sit at the heart of JJ's work and his book, Transformation. Designed., now available in English and actively being adapted for Spanish-speaking audiences.

For JJ, Spanish-language media represents not just a distribution channel, but a community of leaders he is deeply committed to serving — in their language, in their context, and on their terms.