Learning to Start Starting by Learning

Full text

1
Nº 104
DOCUMENTOS DE TRABAJO
Serie Gestión
Learning to Start Starting by Learning
Carlos Vignolo, Sergio Celis

2
Learning to Start Starting by Learning
(Aprendiendo a Emprender Emprendiendo en el Aprender)
Carlos Vignolo and Sergio Celis
Faculty of Physical Science and Mathematics, University of Chile
August 2007, Version 2.0
"Paper aceptado para ser presentado en el congreso Active Learning in Egineering
Education (ALE), Bogotá, Colombia, 9 al 11 de Junio de 2008"
“Love, work and knowledge are the
sources of life
They should also govern it”
Wilhelm Reich
(In the 50th anniversary of his death)
ABSTRACT
The paper introduces an entrepreneurship teaching approach aimed at transforming the
learning process in itself in a start up designed, managed and led by the student. This
method has been developed and used in the School of Engineering and Science at the
University of Chile over the last 5 years as a key element in the undergraduate courses
“Introduction to Industrial Engineering”, “Development of Entrepreneurship Skills” and
“Development of Leadership Abilities”. This method, based on a radical constructivist
approach, emphasizes also the synergetic relationship between meaning and passion.
1. Brief History and Context: The School of Engineering at the University of Chile accepts
around 600 new students annually, all of who belong to the top 1 percent with the best
results from Chile’s national university entrance examination. Around 30 percent of them
choose to specialize in industrial engineering, a professional career that ranks among the
best paid in the Chilean labor market. Each graduate from this specialty at the University
receives, on average, four job offers, normally well before they have completed their
degree. However, only a small percentage of graduates (less than 10 percent) proceed with
their own initiatives after graduation.
The restoration of democracy in 1990 brought with it the revision and transformation, led
by the Industrial Engineering Department in the field of entrepreneurship and innovation,
of the pedagogical model and the curriculum. In 1990 the Department created the course IN
505, “Development of Entrepreneurship Skills,” as an elective course for students from all
engineering specializations. In 1997, the course “Introduction to Industrial Engineering”,
with a focus on the development of autonomy and entrepreneurial spirit, became an
obligatory first year course for students of this specialty.

3
Both courses were designed by a group of researchers and teachers that, based on the
pioneering works of Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela in the field of the biology of
knowledge, saw the possibility of simultaneously increasing the efficacy, efficiency and
satisfaction of engineering students’ learning process by means of linking the development
of entrepreneurship capabilities to improvements in learning skills and the general process
of learning to learn .
A key contextual factor to understand this option to teach entrepreneurship is the fact that
the Engineering School is part of the Faculty of Physical Sciences and Mathematics at the
University of Chile, probably the academic unit closest and most loyal to the model of the
‘Research University’ in Chile. This implies that the majority of the academic staff has a
clear orientation toward publishable research in internationally accredited media. Neither
teaching quality nor entrepreneurship formation are, therefore, priorities for academic
evaluation and for academics work.
To approach the development of the students’ capacities in this area by attempting to
change the motivation and orientation of academic staff would, in this context, be to
condemn the project to failure. On the other hand, a high percentage of students achieve
neither good results nor reasonable levels of satisfaction from the traditional pedagogical
model.
II. The Pedagogical Model:
A pedagogical model, taking these contextual antecedents into account, was designed so
that the student is invited very early on to understand:
• The crucial importance of entrepreneurship skills in the work of industrial
engineers. A sample of 10 percent of graduates, undertaken in 1999, showed that this
capacity was considered to be the most relevant for their work performance. (4.7 on a scale
from 1 to 5) 1
• The fact that entrepreneurship is a generic skill, relevant in all labor situations and
not only for those that opt for business starts-up.
• The relations between entrepreneurship spirit and skills and the levels of autonomy,
design and management of a person’s own life in its fullest sense.
• The possibility of the student to take a proactive role in the process of learning,
transforming it in a significant and transcendent start-up.
• The synergetic relationship between the mission assumed by an entrepreneur and
the passion that the chosen mission is capable of generating.
• The basic practices of entrepreneurship behavior and the way to learn them.
1 Hetz, Rodrigo, “La vinculación de los exalumnos de la carrera de Ingeniería Civil Industrial de la Universidad de
Chile” (The relationships of Industrial Civil Engineering graduates of the University of Chile) Professional Thesis,
1999.

4
III. The Epistemological Model:
The invitation to students to strengthen their entrepreneurship capacities by means of
transforming their studies in a start-up is supported by a radical constructivist
epistemological model which emphasizes the following elements:
• The observer’s participation in the construction of the reality he or she lives in.
• The role of paradigms, moods and focus in the process of building up reality and
inventing oneself.
• The power to invent and change reality derived from the level of consciousness
achieved and the capacity to modify paradigms, harmonize moods and control the
process of focusing attention.
IV. The Operational Model
Some of the specific activities at present in use in two of the courses based on this
approach are:
a) Course: “Introduction to Industrial Engineering”.
An obligatory curriculum course that acts as the gateway to the discipline of industrial
engineering, with the main objective of “expanding awareness of him(her)self and to the
world and local environment, as a first step to appropriate of the process of learning and
becoming and Industrial Engineer’. The course has around 90 students on average.
Activity 1: Mood setting practices: “Tuning in” and “Stretching”
Description: Each class begins with a five minutes individual exercise intended to
investigate the moods, the preoccupations and the questions that students bring along to
each class. In the last five minutes of the class, each student answers the “stretching”
exercise, to identify the ending mood, the most significant learning points and an
evaluation of the class and of his(her) involvement in the class.
Objectives and Results: The main goals of these two activities are to increase student´s
capacity to observe and change their moods and the relationship between this skill and the
quality of the “learning reality” that each student is capable of producing. Most students
end up the course with a much higher consciousness of the role of moods and their capacity
to actively participate in the building up of each class. These exercises are weekly used also
to asses and redesign the activities of the course.

5
Activity 2: The generation, design and development of an action-learning project.
Description: Each student should select a “breakdown”2 and present it in one minute in
front of the class (for this activity the course is divided in two), and then using the Web
support from U-cursos, each student votes for the three most significant “breakdowns”. On
this basis the students are formed into different work groups throughout the semester to
generate, design and develop an idea, product or process to transform the “breakdown”
into an innovation. The first classes are oriented to stimulate initiatives and skills to work
in teams in order to develop projects. A one day workshop entitled “Learning to Learn and
to Start”, usually run on a weekend, has been designed to support this activity.
Objectives and Results: Every semester they achieve important initiatives including some
that students continue beyond the regular academic course time. Examples of these have
been: the “expendepecil”, a machine that issues pencils/pens and other articles for school
and universities and “juntas on line”, a training and web system to strengthen participation
in neighborhoods councils (juntas vecinales) in Santiago.
b) Course: “Development of Entrepreneurship Skills”
This is an elective course opened to students in the last two (of six) years of the
curriculum plan. Its main goal is to immerse them in a real experience of designing and
attempting a start-up project. On average there are around 20 students per semester.
Activity 1: “Individual design of the course as a start-up”
Description: As a way of producing an initial shock that allows them to quickly abandon the
classic cognitive way of learning, students are asked to design the objectives, methods and
evaluation system for the specific course each one of them is going to go through. They are
invited to generate the program of the course based on the following main questions: What
do I think it is to be an entrepreneur?, What specific skills do I want to strengthen?, What
are my passions?, What sort of entrepreneur I would like to become? What do I think are
the practices I should go through in order to achieve my goals?
Results: Usually, around a third of the students abandon the course at this stage, absolutely
incapable of understanding the preparation of the program of the course as a means to train
themselves as entrepreneurs. For the surviving students this very confusing initial phase is
very useful for assuming the objective and the method of the course.
Activity 2: “Group generation of a start-up”
Based on a search of breakdowns that they can take care off in the horizon of a semester,
students are invited to design and run a project in groups of three to six people. They are
asked to relate this projects to the previous investigation on passions and desired skills.
2 A distinction used to distinguish an opportunity to start something new. Most engineering students are trained
to solve problems but not to think of starts-up or innovate based on them.

6
Results: Students begin their initiatives from things that make them enthusiastic or resume
projects that they once had; as examples, the firm nocancela which produces rock music
events in Chile with a level of professionalism greater than the national standard; or the
most popular (most visited) educational web site in Chile, www.escolares.net. Some
student comments about the course are, “A different course, that allows our skills to
develop and which is not possible in other regular curriculum courses”. “It allowed me to
look at my decisions from another point of view. It allowed students to develop in other
professional areas that were not simply technical;” and “Really this course has been one of
the most important to me as an engineering student. It is practical, destroys paradigms and
opens up possibilities for our students to the point that initiatives become a lifestyle”.
V. Conclusions
Linking entrepreneurship teaching to learning to learn has been a very successful way to
generate interest and skills related to entrepreneurship among students, especially in those
that had not previously develop interest nor good habits with traditional teaching methods.
But it also helps to validate entrepreneurship teaching among academics that benefit from
more autonomous, active and participative students. We suggest that this approach is
particularly adequate for research oriented universities.

7
Centro de Gestión (CEGES)
Departamento de Ingeniería Industrial
Universidad de Chile
Serie Gestión
Nota : Copias individuales pueden pedirse a ceges@dii.uchile.cl
Note : Working papers are available to be request with ceges@dii.uchile.cl
2001
29. Modelos de Negocios en Internet (Versión Preliminar)
Oscar Barros V.
30. Sociotecnología: Construcción de Capital Social para el Tercer Milenio
Carlos Vignolo F.
31. Capital Social, Cultura Organizativa y Transversalidad en la Gestión Pública
Koldo Echebarria Ariznabarreta
32. Reforma del Estado, Modernización de la Gestión Pública y Construcción de Capital Social: El Caso Chileno (1994-
2000)
Álvaro V. Ramírez Alujas
33. Volver a los 17: Los Desafíos de la Gestión Política (Liderazgo, Capital Social y Creación de Valor Público:
Conjeturas desde Chile)
Sergio Spoerer H.
2002
34. Componentes de Lógica del Negocio desarrollados a partir de Patrones de Procesos
Oscar Barros V.
35. Modelo de Diseño y Ejecución de Estrategias de Negocios
Enrique Jofré R.
36. The Derivatives Markets in Latin America with an emphasis on Chile
Viviana Fernández
37. How sensitive is volatility to exchange rate regimes?
Viviana Fernández
38. Gobierno Corporativo en Chile después de la Ley de Opas
Teodoro Wigodski S. y Franco Zúñiga G.
39. Desencadenando la Innovación en la Era de la Información y el Vértigo Nihilista
Carlos Vignolo
40. La Formación de Directivos como Expansión de la Conciencia de Sí
Carlos Vignolo
41. Segmenting shoppers according to their basket composition: implications for Cross-Category Management
Máximo Bosch y Andrés Musalem
42. Contra la Pobreza: Expresividad Social y Ética Pública
Sergio Spoerer
43. Negative Liquidity Premia and the Shape of the Term Structure of Interest Rates
Viviana Fernández
2003
44. Evaluación de Prácticas de Gestión en la Cadena de Valor de Empresas Chilenas
Oscar Barros, Samuel Varas y Richard Weber
45. Estado e Impacto de las TIC en Empresas Chilenas
Oscar Barros, Samuel Varas y Antonio Holgado
46. Estudio de los Efectos de la Introducción de un Producto de Marca Propia en una Cadena de Retail
Máximo Bosch, Ricardo Montoya y Rodrigo Inostroza
47. Extreme Value Theory and Value at Risk
Viviana Fernández
48. Evaluación Multicriterio: aplicaciones para la Formulación de Proyectos de Infraestructura Deportiva
Sara Arancibia, Eduardo Contreras, Sergio Mella, Pablo Torres y Ignacio Villablanca
49. Los Productos Derivados en Chile y su Mecánica
Luis Morales y Viviana Fernández
50. El Desarrollo como un Proceso Conversacional de Construcción de Capital Social: Marco Teórico, una Propuesta
Sociotecnológica y un Caso de Aplicación en la Región de Aysén
Carlos Vignolo F., Christian Potocnjak C. y Alvaro Ramírez A.
51. Extreme value theory: Value at risk and returns dependence around the world

8
Viviana Fernández
52. Parallel Replacement under Multifactor Productivity
Máximo Bosch y Samuel Varas
53. Extremal Dependence in Exchange Rate Markets
Viviana Fernández
54. Incertidumbre y Mecanismo Regulatorio Óptimo en los Servicios Básicos Chilenos
Eduardo Contreras y Eduardo Saavedra
2004
55. The Credit Channel in an Emerging Economy
Viviana Fernández
56. Frameworks Derived from Business Process Patterns
Oscar Barros y Samuel Varas
57. The Capm and Value at Risk at Different Time Scales
Viviana Fernández
58. La Formación de Líderes Innovadores como Expansión de la Conciencia de Sí: El Caso del Diplomado en Habilidades
Directivas en la Región del Bío-Bío – Chile
Carlos Vignolo, Sergio Spoerer, Claudia Arratia y Sebastián Depolo
59. Análisis Estratégico de la Industria Bancaria Chilena
Teodoro Wigodski S. y Carla Torres de la Maza
60. A Novel Approach to Joint Business and System Design
Oscar Barros
61. Los deberes del director de empresas y principales ejecutivos Administración de crisis: navegando en medio de la
tormenta.
Teodoro Wigodski
62. No más VAN: el Value at Risk (VaR) del VAN, una nueva metodología para análisis de riesgo
Eduardo Contreras y José Miguel Cruz
63. Nuevas perspectivas en la formación de directivos: habilidades, tecnología y aprendizaje
Sergio Spoerer H. y Carlos Vignolo F.
64. Time-Scale Decomposition of Price Transmission in International Markets
Viviana Fernández
65. Business Process Patterns and Frameworks: Reusing Knowledge in Process Innovation
Oscar Barros
66. Análisis de Desempeño de las Categorías en un Supermercado Usando Data Envelopment Analysis
Máximo Bosch P., Marcel Goic F. y Pablo Bustos S.
67. Risk Management in the Chilean Financial Market The VaR Revolution
José Miguel Cruz
2005
68. Externalizando el Diseño del Servicio Turístico en los Clientes: Teoría y un Caso en Chile
Carlos Vignolo Friz, Esteban Zárate Rojas, Andrea Martínez Rivera, Sergio Celis Guzmán y Carlos Ramírez Correa
69. La Medición de Faltantes en Góndola
Máximo Bosch, Rafael Hilger y Ariel Schilkrut
70. Diseño de un Instrumento de Estimación de Impacto para Eventos Auspiciados por una Empresa Periodística
Máximo Bosch P., Marcel Goic F. y Macarena Jara D.
71. Programa de Formación en Ética para Gerentes y Directivos del Siglo XXI: Análisis de las Mejores Prácticas
Educacionales
Yuli Hincapie y Teodoro Wigodski
72. Adjustment of the WACC with Subsidized Debt in the Presence of Corporate Taxes: the N-Period Case
Ignacio Vélez-Pareja, Joseph Tham y Viviana Fernández
73. Aplicación de Algoritmos Genéticos para el Mejoramiento del Proceso de Programación del Rodaje en la Industria
del Cine Independiente
Marcel Goic F. y Carlos Caballero V.
74. Seguro de Responsabilidad de Directores y Ejecutivos para el Buen Gobierno Corporativo
Teodoro Wigodski y Héctor H. Gaitán Peña
75. Creatividad e Intuición: Interpretación desde el Mundo Empresarial
Teodoro Wigodski
76. La Reforma del Estado en Chile 1990-2005. Balance y Propuestas de Futuro
Mario Waissbluth
77. La Tasa Social de Descuento en Chile
Fernando Cartes, Eduardo Contreras y José Miguel Cruz
78. Assessing an Active Induction and Teaming Up Program at the University of Chile

9
Patricio Poblete, Carlos Vignolo, Sergio Celis, William Young y Carlos Albornoz
2006
79. Marco Institucional y trabas al Financiamiento a la Exploración y Mediana Minería en Chile
Eduardo Contreras y Christian Moscoso
80. Modelo de Pronóstico de Ventas.
Viviana Fernández
81. La Ingeniería de Negocios y Enterprise Architecture
Óscar Barros V.
82. El Valor Estratégico de la innovación en los Procesos de Negocios
Óscar Barros V.
83. Strategic Management of Clusters: The Case of the Chilean Salmon Industry
Carlos Vignolo F., Gastón Held B., Juan Pablo Zanlungo M.
84. Continuous Innovation Model for an Introductory Course to Industrial Engineering
Carlos Vignolo, Sergio Celis , Ana Miriam Ramírez
85. Bolsa de Productos y Bolsa Agrícola en Chile: un análisis desde la teoría de carteras
Eduardo Contreras, Sebastián Salinas
2007
86. Arquitectura Y Diseño De Procesos De Negocios
Óscar Barros V.
87. Personalizando la Atención del Cliente Digital
Juan Velásquez S.
88. ¿En el país de las maravillas?: equipos de alta gerencia y cultura empresarial
Sergio Spoerer
89. Responsabilidad Social Empresarial: El Caso De Forestal Mininco S.A. y Comunidades Mapuches
Teodoro Wigodski
90. Business Processes Architecture And Design
Óscar Barros V.
91. Gestión Estratégica: Síntesis Integradora y Dilemas Abiertos
Teodoro Wigodski
92. Evaluación Multicriterio para Programas y Proyectos Públicos
Eduardo Contreras, Juan Francisco Pacheco
93. Gestión De Crisis: Nuevas Capacidades Para Un Mundo Complejo.
Teodoro Wigodski
94. Tres Años Del Sistema De Alta Dirección Pública En Chile: Balance Y Perspectivas
Rossana Costa y Mario Waissbluth
95. Ética En Las Organizaciones De Asistencia Sanitaria
Teodoro Wigodski
2008
96. Caso Chispas: Lealtad debida en el directorio de una sociedad
Teodoro Wigodski
97. Caso Falabella – Almacenes París: Profesionalización de la Empresa Familiar
Teodoro Wigodski
98. Evaluación de inversiones bajo incertidumbre: teoría y aplicaciones a proyectos en Chile.
Eduardo Contreras
99. Sistemas Complejos Y Gestión Publica
Mario Waissbluth
100. Ingeniería de Negocios: Diseño Integrado de Negocios, Procesos y Aplicaciones TI. Primera Parte
Oscar Barros
101. Ingeniería de Negocios: Diseño Integrado de Negocios, Procesos y Aplicaciones TI. Segunda Parte
Oscar Barros
102. Compañía Sudamericana de Vapores (CSAV): Una empresa chilena globalizada
Teodoro Wigodski, Juan Rius, Eduardo Arcos
103. Active learning as source of continuous innovation in courses
Carlos Vignolo, Sergio Celis, Indira Guggisberg
104. Learning to Start Starting by Learning
Carlos Vignolo, Sergio Celis