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Flores: La venganza de Buda

Rafael Gumucio
Las Ultimas Noticias
domingo 19 de noviembre de 2006

("Esta resena de Rafael Gumucio sobre el senador Fernando Flores del PPD, uno de los personajes mas polemicos en este escandalo de corrupcion que sacude al gobierno y en particular al PPD."[Pato Navia])

"Yo no estoy para tanta huevadas"-declaro con su característica elegancia el senador Flores, para posteriormente acometer muchas de las huevadas que a los chilenos nos tienen cansado de la política nacional.

Sin pudor fue de estudio de televisión en estudio de televisión ventilando conversaciones privadas, pasando por encima de cualquier institución, reglamento, o simple lealtad amistosa, para dejar caer-como quien no quiere la cosa-todo tipo de acusaciones al voleo. El único logro visible, a parte de la destrucción sistemática de un partido que hace pocos meses quería dirigir, fue cubrir y minimizar las irregularidades de Girardi, confundiendo a todos en una bruma de declaraciones, y permitiendo, en nombre de la bendita transparencia, más impunidad.

No me cabe duda que al senador Flores mis criticas y las de cualquiera lo tienen sin cuidado. Una de la más indignante de sus características es la seguridad absoluta en su propia genialidad. Vino de estados unidos donde gana mucho dinero y tiene muchos amigos, y sus nietos e hijos viven y prosperan, para salvarnos a los chilenos de nuestra propia mediocridad. De pura buena persona que es se ha hecho senador, desembolsando una gran suma de dinero en ello, eligiendo una región desértica y pobre a la que conectar con los flujos informaticos del mundo entero.

No nos portamos bien, los defraudamos, no estuvimos a su altura, fuimos mediocres, corruptos, mala onda, así que el Buda Flores decide ya no querernos y decirnos en nuestra cara que somos unos mafiosos, unos ignorantes, unos pobres tipos a los que-de no mejorar substancialmente-el va abandonar, para volver a San Francisco donde lo idolatran.

La grandilocuencia es para Flores una vieja amiga. En el gobierno de Salvador Allende estaba a punto de conectar toda la administración pública a un computador gigante alojado en uno de los departamentos del paseo Bulnes, cuando vino el golpe. Flores, Talquino, brusco y sin pelo en la lengua, amigo de sus amigos, sufrió la relegación y el exilio. En inglés, y sin las tallas y la mala onda de los compatriotas, logró una extraña fusión de filosofía y tecnología que conquisto el alma de más de un magnate.

Flores, un hombre sensible y más bien solitario empezó a gustarle eso de tener discipulos. En chile legiones de personeros públicos y privados han pasado por sus cursos, cantando las alabanzas del profeta en todo tipo de foros. Varias veces he tratado que algunos de sus iluminados alumnos me expliquen los revolucionarios contenidos de las charlas de Flores. Generalmente suelen estos repetirme sarta de lugares comunes como que hay que llegar a la hora a las citas, o que hay que sincerar las relaciones en la empresa. También me hablan de un futuro en red-que ya es presente-y nuevas formas de organización y otras bendiciones tecnotronicas imposibles de verificar.

Flores, el hombre del futuro, el campeón de la tecnología, y el nuevo conocimiento, representa sin embargo una figura muy conocida de nuestro
pasado: El millonario que hace política por filantropía. El caballero que paga su campaña con su propia plata y que por eso queda facultado para dar lecciones a los pobres ratones de cola pelada que anda rasguñando boletas y robando mesas de ping pong. Como si el hecho realmente indignante no fuese el que en chile un hombre pobre o normal, no pueda llegar a ser senador sin robar algo, o contar con el gentil auspicio de algún empresario.

No parece darse cuenta que ambos, el senador que ve la política como una excentricidad en que gastar su plata, y el senador que hace trampa para conservar su clientela, son las dos caras de la misma moneda, la de caciquismo, la de la política visto como un pasatiempo parecido a la caza de ciervos.

Lo que falta no son ni referentes nuevos, ni nuevas formas de entender la política, sino la vieja, la antigua y despreciaba humildad para verse como parte de un todo que no se puede uno permitir ensuciar, escupir o despreciar impunemente.

Philosophy	Description	Application to Extension practice
Liberal	Probably the most enduring of the major educational philosophies; stresses develop ment of intellectual power of the mind. Emphasizes content mastery with the educator viewed as expert/authority.	Educational effort in pesticide education with agriculture specialist providing instruction via lecture with a test following presentation of material; content mastery is essential due to mandatory testing for licensing of pesticide applicators.
Progressive	Developed out of the ideas of John Dewey; stresses an experiential, problem-solving approach to learning. Emphasizes experience of learner in determining problem areas and solutions to be considered.	Human resource specialist in interior design and household equipment designs an instructional approach directed toward household maintenance via a problemsolving process; participants identify, by experience, problems in home care and then determine appropriate procedure based on alternatives suggested by the specialists.
Behaviorist	Emphasizes importance of the environment in shaping desired behavior. Behaviorism has contributed to the development of systematic instructional design models and emphasizes accountability.	Family economics specialist provides home study course in estate planning involving a systematic (step-by-step) approach to determining accountable end results; specialist serves as facilitator while participants take initiative to complete process and evaluate each step before proceeding to the next step.
Humanist	Based on the assumption that human nature is essentially positive and that each person possesses virtually unlimited potential; places emphasis on personal growth and selfdirection in the learning process.	Family development specialist designs instruction relevant to economic stress with emphasis on self-concept and self-esteem (the worth of the individual). Small group workshops, seminars, and forums used to enhance "participatory" approach resulting in a positive feeling by individuals. Specialist serves as facilitator of the learning process.
Radical	Stresses the role of education as a means of bringing about major social change; education is used to combat social, political, and economic oppression within society.	Public affairs specialist designs instruction relevant to public issues such as water policy. Forums, selfinstructional packages, and other techniques are used to increase awareness of specific issues and, in turn, provide opportunity for possible community change.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

This phenomenological study will seek to understand the process that adults experience when they become entrepreneurs by pursuing business opportunities. This chapter presents the background of the problem, problem statement, research questions, and conceptual framework for the study. Significance of the study, limitations of the study, and definition of terms are also addressed.

Background to the Problem

“New business creation is a fundamental indicator of entrepreneurial activity in the U.S. economy. The self sufficiency and independence that lead individuals to create new businesses significantly affects economic growth, innovation and job creation” (Reynolds, 2002 p.6). As capitalism has emerged as the Western world's dominant economic system, entrepreneurial activity has become the major source of upward social mobility and the primary source of job creation. Entrepreneurial activity is the major source of economic enhancement and the first cause of innovation in business (Bygrave, 2004). Five hundred million people are participating in entrepreneurial activity worldwide (Reynolds, 2002). “firm startup effort” are undertaken by half of all adults in the United States (U.S.) during their work careers, and one in eight working adults in the U.S. started a new business in 2001 (Reynolds, 2002). “firm startup effort” is

Entrepreneurial activity is a means of accomplishing personal goals and reaching self-actualization. The typical Monday through Friday work schedule of the ‘60s and ‘70s is no longer true for a large segment of today’s workforce. Employees are increasingly complaining that the line between work and life has become blurred, creating personal conflicts and stress (Brett & Stroh, 2003). Entrepreneurship provides the possibility of personal achievement for those who feel disengaged in their jobs and who don’t find a sense of purpose in their work. Starting a business gives people the chance of reaching more exciting and creative ways of life. Entrepreneurship is not only healthy for the economic system, but also provides an opportunity for many people to achieve a better quality of life.

Currently, 61% of US college and universities offer at least one course on entrepreneurship (Bygrave, 2004). Many formal educational programs focus on U.S. teaching techniques and models about how the entrepreneurial process should be managed.. However, these programs aim to help people after they have already made the decision to start a business or are evaluating the possibility of starting a business.

Problem Statement

Despite the importance assigned to the need to foster entrepreneurship, only 6% of the U.S. population actively participates in entrepreneurial activity (Reynolds, 2002). Most of the remaining 94% are traditional workers who expect to find and maintain an employer who will pay them for their labor.

Literature is abundant on what successful entrepreneurs do cite, which social conditions create more business cite, and which entrepreneurial activities are highly correlated with business growth cite. Yet we know little about the process that occurs just before the idea to undertake a business comes to mind. Research to help us understand how people decide to become entrepreneurs, what motivates them, and how they perceive and describe this process is scant. Little scholarly research is available to explain the nature of the decision individuals make to pursue unconventional ideas. Why would somebody leave a secure job to start a new enterprise?

Purpose Statement

The purpose of this study is to understand the process that triggers a person’s decision to become an entrepreneur. The study aims to understand what personal transformations, if any, are experienced before adults modify their priorities to pursue a business opportunity.

Research Questions

1. How do entrepreneurs describe the process of becoming entrepreneurs?

2. How do entrepreneurs describe the process of identifying an opportunity?

3. How do entrepreneurs describe the moment when they become aware of the desire to start a business?

4. How do entrepreneurs perceive themselves before and after becoming entrepreneurs?

Conceptual Framework

This study is informed by various concepts such as creative destruction cite, structural determinism cite, and perspective transformation cite. These concepts are used, related, and analyzed from the constructivist theory. A constructivist perspective is congruent with much of adult learning theory (Merriam & Caffarella, 1999). “Constructivists posit that learning is a process of constructing meaning. Drawing from Piaget, learning as an individual activity, involves a progressive adaptation of [an] individual’s cognitive schemes to the physical environment” (Towmey, 2005.p.11). This study presents the change of perspective to become an entrepreneur as an individual’s progressive adaptation to the physical environment, performed spontaneously when becoming an entrepreneur and triggered possibly by formal education.

Creative destruction

Entrepreneurs are conceptualized as creative destructors (Schumpeter, 1950). They are people who rearrange the current allocation of resources to create new, productive relations. These new relations produce outcomes desired by the entrepreneurs and imply a progressive adaptation to the physical environment. It is in while searching for these new outcomes that entrepreneur motivates themselves to pursue an opportunity. The entrepreneur’s behavior reflects a kind of person willing to change priorities like career development and financial security to pursue an identified opportunity (Drucker, 1970).

Entrepreneurship is a function of different factors like opportunities, motivation, and resources (Aldrich & Zimmer, 1985). However, the perception of an opportunity rather than the resource controlled drives the entrepreneurship process (Gartner, 1985). Entrepreneurs don’t have the resources; they combine disconnected resources to create new, more valuable conditions (Schumpeter, 1950). Through this process, entrepreneurs rearrange the order of the economic system and reform it.

Structural Determinism

Opportunities are interpretations that adults make about the world that they are living. Opportunities are meaningful to the adult not because of the objective conditions of the opportunity, but because of a particular interaction between the adult’s previous experience and the environment in which he or she is living. A business opportunity is a subjective idea that someone has concerning the benefits that it (the opportunity) can bring to oneself or to others through the deployment of specific actions that can capture the opportunity. This subjective idea of the opportunity is a mental construction that the person creates. Like all mental constructions, it’s an internal process that depends more on the person observing the phenomenon than on the “objectives” characteristics of the opportunity. Entrepreneurs, as living systems, are structured and determined systems, and as such deal, nothing external to them can specify what happens to them (Maturana, 1970, 1975). Therefore, the opportunity does not exist outside the head of the entrepreneur and should be possible to develop the ability of observing opportunities. Inquiring about how the internal process of perceive an idea happen could help to facilitate, by formal education, the process of becoming entrepreneur.

Perspective Transformation

The decision to change career and/or financial security to pursue an opportunity represents a big transformation on the adult’s life. This transformation can be understood as a perspective transformation (Mezirow, 1999). Perspective transformation is the process of becoming critical about the way that we perceive, understand, and feel about the world (Mezirow, 1990). This transformative process can be provoked by a single dramatic event, a series of almost unnoticed cumulative events, a deliberate conscious effort to make change in one’s life, or by the natural developmental progression of maturing. This research will seek to understand how adult entrepreneurs describe these events trying to discover if they are/were aware of this process.

Definition of Terms

Structural determinism. Structural determinism is, according to system theory, the property of the autopietic[1] (Maturana & Varela, 1970) system such as any action or influence coming from outside that does not have a direct or mechanical effect over the system, but is always modified or mediated by the organism.

Entrepreneur by opportunity. Somebody who starts a business even though he/she is employed and does not have a present or future financial crisis pushing him/her to start the business.

Entrepreneur by necessity. Somebody who starts a business due to a present or future financial crisis that pushes him/her to start a new activity.

Significance to the field

Entrepreneurship education has been limited only to those interested in business and who have already decided to undertake a business venture. The understanding searched by this study enlarges the focus of the entrepreneurial to those who are not comfortable with their work life and/or those who want to start a new stage of their lives. This study will inform entrepreneur educators how to become more effective when promoting entrepreneurial spirit.

This research is also relevant to the field of business management. Human resource practices to deal with early retirement can be enlightened by encouraging entrepreneurship. Adults close to retirement age could become important strategic partners of their former employers if they decide to start a business. The implicit knowledge (Nonaka, 1998) could be strategically used by companies by promoting older employers to start their businesses.

On the other hand, helping adult professionals start their own businesses could be a good strategy to reduce the negative effects of mass layoffs. This approach could be very interesting for labor unions trying to help their associates when layoffs are announced.

Limitations to the Study

This study establishes a difference between entrepreneurs by opportunity and entrepreneurs by necessity. Even though the outcome is similar no matter what the trigger, the process to become an entrepreneur is different when caused by opportunity rather than by necessity. The perspective transformation when the process is triggered by opportunity occurs spontaneously, in contrast to the perspective transformation caused by necessity where adults have no options. When the transformation is caused by necessity, the transformation is triggered by an explicit disorienting dilemma (i.e., a financial crisis). When the transformation is caused by opportunity, the event generating the transformation and how this event is experienced is unclear. Understanding the causes of entrepreneurial behavior by opportunity will help to create a better educational environment to facilitate transformations and, as a result, foster entrepreneurship.

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[1] Autopoiesis: The concept of autopoiesis tries to capture an essential characteristic of living organisms (auto=self, poiesis=production). Its purpose and definition are stated in Maturana and Varela (1980): “Our aim was to propose the characterization of living systems that explains the generation of all the phenomena proper to them. We have done this by pointing at Autopoiesis in the physical space as a necessary and sufficient condition for a system to be a living one.” “An autopoietic system is organized (defined as a unity) as a network of processes of production (transformation and destruction) of components that produces the components which: (i) through their interactions and transformations continuously regenerate and realize the network of processes (relations) that produced them; and (ii) constitute it (the machine) as a concrete unity in the space in which they (the components) exist by specifying the topological domain of its realization as such a network.”

Expositores estadounidenses del concepto "Expansion de conciencia de si"

Buscando conexiones con el metodo de ensenhanza que usa el PHD del DII me encontre con respetados autores estadounidenses del campo de la educacion. El concepto bajo el cual se desarrollan ideas muy similares a las del PHD es Transformative Learning. Uno de los autores que ha expandido la comprension del transformative learning hacia espacios que escapan al paradigma racionalista es Dirkx. Hay una rica literatura y una interesante teoria que aun esta en construccion.

Dirkx (1997) proporciona una visión sobre el aprendizaje transformativo que implica formas muy personales e imaginativas de saber - la manera del Mito más bien que de la razón-. Lo mítico refleja una faceta de saber a través de símbolos, imágenes, e historias. Dirkx (1997) describe el alma contando experiencias más que con una definición. “siendo sobrecogido por una puesta del sol, o impactado por el dolor y el desamparo frente al sufrimiento de otra persona. Sentimos el alma a través del arte, la música, y las películas. Es un momento mágico que trasciende la racionalidad para otorgar una profundidad, un poder, un misterio, y un profundo significado que conecta el ser con en el mundo.” (Cranton, 2005. p.50).

Future research in Transformative Learning

Taylor outlines 8 themes from the research published up until 2000: (1) transformative learning is uniquely adult; (2) TL appears to be linear, but not necessarily step-wise process; (3) the nature of a frame of reference and how it transform is unclear; (4) a disorienting dilemma usually initiates transformative learning; (6) discourse is equally dependent on relational ways of knowing; (7) context plays an important role in shaping transformative learning, but the influence of culture has not been well investigated; and (8) some characteristics of a learning environment that foster transformative learning have been identified, but more work needs to be done in this area. Based on his review Taylor suggests future research: (1) in-depth analyses of specific components of transformative learning that tend to be overlooked in the broader studies studies-for example, feeling such as anger, happiness, and shame, the management of emotion, and changes in behavior following transformation; (2) studies of how transformative learning is fostered in classroom; (3) new and varied research design and data collection techniques, including longitudinal research, observer participation, collaborative inquiry, action research, and quantitative studies

Definitions of entrepreneurship

Schumpeter (1934) "carrying out new combination"
Stevenson (1985) "entrepreneur is being driven by perception of opportunity rather than resources currently controled"
Gartner (1985) "as the creation of new organization"

Tiffin, S. (2004). Entrepreneurship in Latin America: Perspectives on Education and Innovation. pag 55. 1st Edition publishing by PRAEGER .

An Entrepreneurship Program for the University Simon Bolivar.

The Undergraduate Course.

To date, the course has been given 6 times, once each academic quarter (12 week), each course havin on average 25 student. the students who took thei course came from different fields in engineering and from chemistry, arquitectural, and urban studies. Apart from the students in production engineering, the rest had very little knowledge of business. At the beginning of each couse, I asked the students to answer a number of entrepreneurship related questions. Data was obtained from a total of 152 students.

In general, students perceived technological entrepreneurship as being a difficult endeavor. When asked to evaluate obstacles to entrepreneurship, student placed lack of financing as most important factor, followed by excess red tape on registering a business and other business transaction.

...access to financing is certainly a problem faced by small an medium size businesses in Latin America; however, manu of these problem have their roots in the lack of confidence that the financial institution have on the project proposed (grupo DCF 2002)--acceso de las pequenas y medianas empresas al financiamiento. Informe de trabajo. Division de micro, pequena y mediana empresa, departamento de desarrollo sostenible, BID.

Tiffin, S. (2004). Entrepreneurship in Latin America: Perspectives on Education and Innovation. pag 18. 1st Edition publishing by PRAEGER .

what suggestion can we make about further developing this field and getting the knowledge into curriculum, executive training, and public policy? First, the obvious-we need more research! More exactly, we need research carried out in conjunction with stakeholders. In other words, the research should not just be for the sake of academic publication but to take input from users who defines what the critical issues are, and who must be involved in applying the knowledge as well as funding its generation.

pensar en sudamérica

una entrevista muy lúcida del presidente del Perú....

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Pensar en sudamérica

Una entrevista muy lúcida del presidente del Perú me hace pensar en un futuro promisorio para nuestra América mestiza. Libre Mercado, Estados poderosos, y democracias en permanente perfeccionamiento, es todo lo que necesita sudamérica para sacar a su gente de la pobreza y constituirse en un grato lugar para vivir. Tenemos recursos, una población que crece,  una sustrato cultural común, y paisajes envidiables para disfrutar. Llegará el momento de poner nuestro talento al servicios de los habitantes de sudamérica. Llegará el momento de crear soluciones y transferirnos conocimeinto mutuamenteen.

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