ANTINNOVATIONModel for Sustainable Innovation Processes in Micro Enterprises

by Hugo Rojas

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Our work in Chile, as Laboratory of Innovation in the field of micro- and small-scale enterprises –creating and systematizing the application of methodologies that allow the incorporation of processes of value creation inside these enterprises– has had as main guidance the activation of vision capabilities (internal and external) as an enhancer of people’s entrepreneurial skills.

This focus has been a precondition to our work before initiating any other kind of action orientated to the strengthening of the business management capabilities of the entrepreneurs.

LAB.

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Emphasize Workshop from the METAVISIÓN Program/FOSIS Entrepreneurs

(Solidarity and Social Investment Fund of Chile).

Temuco, South of Chile.

Considering the institutional requirements, our role on the scene has been to create competitive conditions in the sector of the small-scale enterprises; conditions that have been developed from a people-centered approach that attunes two concepts in order to create and apply a “virtuous match”.

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On one hand, innovation as a concept of development and transformation that enables the creation of value and allows changes that improve the life standards of people. On the other hand, sustainability as a broad concept of balance and scale for the development of the human beings and their context –considered transversally at every participation level from the environmental sustainability to territories, organization, municipalities, neighborhoods, goods and services, entrepreneurship, life styles and practices.

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Hi Cake! Sweet and Baked Greetings.Entrepreneur Pabla Paredes / El Salto, Metropolitan Region.DEI Program of SERNAM (Chile’s National Women's Service).

Our participation on the new contemporary challenges of global presence and expression –making processes and methodologies accessible to generate sustainable capabilities on people so they can resolve integration and development problems– confronts us with the search of new models to approach these scenarios.

We face these challenges through the use of synergies associated to our acquired knowledge from the experience in situ of these entrepreneurial realities with our understanding of the academical educational effort focused on how people learn and use new processes to positively transform their context and others.

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This approach based on the immersion and observation of its actors and practices is metaphorically associated with the behavior of the ants and the nature of its micro actions. Work is done from a one-to-one relationship, conducting forces of change with a sense of a collective sustainability on that scenario.

PROPOSAL.

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Entrepreneur Hirma Casanova. In situ interview/ Lo Prado, Santiago.

Immersion process/ Field visit to gather and register information about her entrepreneurial practices, availability and restrictions.

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GNIKO Spirits. Entrepreneur Janina Lara / Temuco, South of Chile.

This model called Ant Innovation is focused beyond the widely acknowledged coordination capability and team work these insects possess in their organization. It concentrates its attention and observes the nature and the manner in which the entrepreneurial practices are developed on a micro scenario of widespread and high vulnerability, with the purpose of applying strategies on these practices, aimed at enhancing their capacity to create sustainable value using these homes as a starting point toward society as a whole.

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A Innovation is a process for the micr o-and small-scale entrepreneurship that works as ground-up model, harnessing people´s creative and innovative potential that perform on such scenario.This process provides a model to innovate that is different to those currently available and inspired on macro-economic areas or based on the corporative logics of larger enterprises and tend to the development of innovation of vertically-oriented and concentrated management processes which are designed from the point of view of the problem more than of the opportunities.

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This proposal makes accessible a model that is more proportional to the micro- and small-scale arena of the entrepreneur, promoting the creation of value from a sense that is local, own and capital; this is possible through generative development strategies that are sustainable over time.

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It integrates the natural observation that entrepreneurs put into practice, one that delivers essential distinctions of their actions and their territory and potentiates it with their own vision about human capital, social environment and a future term that allows them to open their capacity to new opportunities and initiates the development of an innovative kind of behavior.

Ant Innovation is a sustainable innovation approach aimed at developing micro enterprises activating the innovative and creative potential of people.

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UNDER AND ABOVE THE GROUND.The following four dimensions gather the essential coordinates on which the development of everyday practices of micro- and small-scale enterprises is based.

These dimensions constitute a behavior that is replicated on the entrepreneurs from urban areas, peripheral areas near them, and those close to rural areas in Chile.

We have termed this context the Survival Paradigm.

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The Family is the central axis in the development of this paradigm, its support and protection as a social and affective structure.

Education is seen as a way for improvement and change into a better reality for both their children and their descendants.

Relegation and self-postponement are the forms of sublimation to attain the procurement of the wellbeing of the group.

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1.POSTPONEMENT

It is expressed on a District, the Quarter or the Neighborhood where they live. It represents a frontier that locates and limits their actions defining the extension of what can they do and establishing references to model it. To those who have migrated to another territory, their City, Town or Region is their referent.

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2.TERRITORY

The Circumstances of their personal story are a key reference on this kind of behavior. It is the history of their experiences as a lineal construction of facts that are not related. The episodic living with its fractures and changes, from urgency to emergency, and not from a construction projected in time, which relates events lived and constructs experience from reflection. It is to live for today without modeling the future.

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3.HISTORY

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On the axis of beliefs, Material Things validate persons; it is the expression of the need to acquire value through things.

They are unable to acknowledge the value on a personal level (self-esteem) and the value of the idea (quality).

It is the belief that value resides on external things and not in them or what they do. Value lays on external entities: other people, religion, or luck.

It is the understanding of opportunities and value as derived from circumstances and externalities and not from their own actions.

4.VALIDATION

POSTPONEMENT TERRITORY

VALIDATION HISTORY

Behavior

Beliefs

Personal Social

SURVIVAL PARADIGM

MORE THAN ANTSThese dimensions constitute the behaviors to be developed by micro- and small-scale entrepreneurs, in order to progressively integrate processes to create value.

From these dimensions it is possible to determine an array of experiences and apprenticeships that enable starting transferring beliefs and values to a dominant paradigmatic framework that has a bearing on the way in which entrepreneurs perceive their reality and respond to it acting from their own innovative being.

We have termed this area of action, driven by these four motors, the Innovation Paradigm.

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ANTINNOVATION MODEL

It is personal action in opposition to self-postponement. It maintains the development and care of the family as a base structure, but it also incorporates the entrepreneurs to their growth agenda and potentiates the development of the group on its internal relationships and the ones with others to promote social and empathic integration between people.

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1.INCLUSION

It modifies the perception of the physical frontier that limits the actions of the entrepreneurs and establishes the referents that define their doing. It presents the scenario as a context of action that is formulated from the opportunity and not from the demographic and physical aspects.

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2.SCENARIO

It establishes Envisage as empowerment to entrepreneurship and banishes inertia from personal history. It constitutes a mobilizing Vision that incorporates an agenda, the recognition of acting agents, and an ecosystem of relationships. It allows incorporating Envisage as a tool of permanent availability that enables modeling the future and its onward conduction from the present.

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3.VISION

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It allows recognizing Value on a personal level and the surrounding environment. Secondly, it is orientated to create value from their own characteristics and the distinguishing factors of the entrepreneurship, in order to achieve a competitive capacity and the sustainability of the initiatives.

It enhances the internal capacity of the entrepreneurs and strengthens their entrepreneurship capabilities generating a counterbalance in the permanent game of achieving equilibrium with the external factors that affect their ecosystems of life and business.

4.VALUE

INCLUSION SCENARIO

VALUE VISION

BEHAVIOR

BELIEFS

PERSONAL SOCIAL

Procesess of the Innovative EntrepreneurshipMINUS PLUS

INTERIOR EXTERIORSustainability

(Integrating) (Visualizing)

(Distinguishing) (Projecting)

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VISION LAB.

When the time comes to face social problems, the design of solutions derived from the observation of the human behavior, in order to generate better life standards has been a resource throughout the history of society.

Refocusing this kind of observation towards the natural behavior to bring up solutions –not only to people but also to their live ecosystem– involves the incorporation of an approach on sustainability to deliver a solution which will allow us to give answers with new models; answers not only for the requirement of generating economic value through competitiveness, but also to deliver a sustainable social value as a result of the practice of entrepreneurship.

Hugo Rojas / Mindlab Director

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DELISABELSweets from Chile / Santiago.

design: www.lolamundo.cl ANTINNOVATION