Tag: entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship is an exciting and rewarding journey that offers endless possibilities for both personal and professional growth. As an entrepreneur, you have the opportunity to transform your goals and ideals into a thriving business that can make a significant impact on society. Moreover, entrepreneurship grants the freedom to be your own boss, set your own goals, and create a business culture that aligns with your values.

Content marked with this tag includes concepts, suggestions, or advice for continuous learning and innovation, adapting to changing markets, and developing new skills that can enhance your entrepreneurial aspirations.

Social Validation, Institutional Distrust, and the Rise of Digital Activism in Congress

Andres Tellez Vallejo

When Bureaucracy Lets Democracy Drift

In Colombia, bureaucracy has hardened into a rigid, politicized, and opaque maze. Between delays that stall, audits that fail to deter, and controls that do not correct, legislative management has acquired labels that are hard to shake: inefficiency and disrepute. Transparency International’s 2024 index placed Colombia at 39/100 and 92nd of 180 countries: a step backward from the previous year. The underlying message is unambiguous: perceived corruption erodes trust and, with it, the legitimacy of the institutions that ought to channel democratic conflict and hope.

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Ayakuná: Sustainable Design Rooted in Colombia’s Cultural Identity

Andres Tellez Vallejo

The management philosophy behind the Ayakuná Project is anchored in three pillars: sustainability, identity, and transformation.

Colombia, a land of towering mountains, lush forests that breathe life, and rivers that whisper ancient stories, is more than a place on a map. It is a living symphony of colors, scents, and memories. Across its vast and diverse geography thrives a collective spirit that endures, creates, and blossoms even in the face of challenge.

Amid this mosaic of beauty stands Belén de los Andaquíes, a small town in the Caquetá region where nature still speaks its purest language and culture remains deeply intertwined with the land. It is here that Ayakuná was born: an act of love toward the environment and toward a community that understands its roots as the foundation of its future.

From this green, generous corner of Colombia arises a powerful conviction: progress should not demand leaving home behind. Staying in one’s land is not an act of resignation, but of purpose, an affirmation of commitment to the nation’s growth and collective well-being. Each sustainable initiative, every creative effort that honors tradition, becomes an expression of pride: the pride of being Colombian, of belonging to a country that thrives in diversity and calls for action rather than nostalgia.

The Ayakuná Project embodies that promise. From its beginnings in Belén de los Andaquíes, it set out to create not only a sustainable packaging solution that preserves cultural identity but also a tangible example that Colombia’s greatness is built by the hands that stay; hands that believe, innovate, and transform. Every decision within the project carries the same intention: to contribute to a nation that shines through its people, its resources, and its immeasurable natural beauty.

From Concept to Craft: A Story of Responsible Innovation

Ayakuná’s management unfolds like a story; a sequence of deliberate, transparent decisions aimed at one clear goal: to design a sustainable package that overcomes the technical and functional limits of its predecessor, while protecting the symbols and meanings that make it unique.

Each phase of the project engages local entrepreneurs, artisans, and students, not as spectators, but as co-creators. Sustainability here is not a decorative ideal but the backbone of every process. Work is divided into clear stages: research, co-creation, prototyping, validation, and scaling; each guided by data, dialogue, and purpose.

During the research phase, the team maps out both technical and cultural dimensions: testing materials for strength, moisture resistance, and recyclability, while also studying the symbols, colors, and patterns that express community identity. The aim is simple yet profound: to prove that performance and meaning can evolve together.

Workshops with artisans, plant workers, and students explore every detail: how the package opens, how it performs under stress, how it communicates its message. These insights become design principles; ergonomics, packing speed, brand legibility, and cultural fidelity.

Prototyping follows an agile rhythm. Variants of recycled fibers, local agricultural residues, and compostable biopolymers are tested for durability, print quality, and biodegradability. At the same time, the team experiments with design techniques, hot stamping, microtexturing, low-migration inks to ensure the cultural symbolism remains intact even as materials evolve.

Resilient Sourcing and Pragmatic Modernization

Ayakuná’s supply strategy is built on resilience and traceability. Recognizing the limits of its current raw material, the project establishes agreements with local producers, integrates recycled fibers where feasible, and experiments with second-generation biomaterials. Each source is tracked for yield, seasonality, and logistics, ensuring flexibility without sacrificing quality.

In manufacturing, modernization is practical rather than extravagant. Small adjustments, controlling humidity, refining molds, improving maintenance, make a significant impact. The team applies Kaizen, the Japanese philosophy of continuous improvement, to stabilize processes, reduce waste, and enhance quality over time.

Preserving Identity, Building the Future

From its first sketch, Ayakuná treats cultural identity not as decoration but as design constraint. Traditional motifs, indigenous names, and geometric patterns are documented and integrated into modern guidelines that respect both symbolism and industrial feasibility. The result is packaging that feels new yet familiar, a bridge between ancestral meaning and contemporary functionality.

When tested in real markets, Ayakuná’s packaging proves its worth. It reduces waste, stacks better, and protects its contents more efficiently; all while reinforcing the brand’s cultural image. Merchants appreciate its practicality, entrepreneurs its scalability, and students its educational value as a model of sustainable innovation.

A Living Example of Sustainable Management

Ayakuná’s governance model is transparent, and data driven. Key indicators: material efficiency, process stability, user satisfaction, and cultural preservation are monitored monthly. When deviations arise, corrective measures and root-cause analyses feed the next cycle of improvement.

In communication, Ayakuná tells a story supported by evidence. Technical sheets and infographics explain material life cycles, while short narratives celebrate the symbolism behind each design choice. The result is a project that resonates across audiences: business owners seeking reliability, students eager to learn, and citizens proud of a local innovation with global meaning.

More Than Packaging

Ayakuná is more than a product; it’s a declaration of values. It represents Colombia’s capacity to innovate from within, to merge technology and tradition, and to pursue sustainability without losing soul.

Through every decision and every material tested, Ayakuná demonstrates that sustainability is not improvised; it’s designed with care, negotiated with respect, and proven through real use. It is, ultimately, a story of belonging: of a package that works, that tells a story, and that, above all, protects the land from which it was born.

Learning what to learn is the new competitive advantage today

Andres Tellez Vallejo

In a world where information is everywhere and change accelerates like a runaway conveyor belt, the old signals of advantage: performative hustle, polished credentials, and well-worn career scripts no longer cut through. He watches founders pitch louder while margins thin, a shop owner refreshes dashboards that multiply without clarifying, a salesperson cycles through scripts that once worked, and a student stacks certificates like charms on a bracelet. They are busy, but busyness is not the same as progress. The ones who move ahead look different. They learn what to learn and how to turn learning into impact. They do it quietly, methodically, and their advantage compounds.

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Errors realign our compass, and a misstep becomes a turning point

Andres Tellez Vallejo

The central idea Mario Alonso Puig has shared for years suggests that life does not move in a straight line and that turning points often arise from our mistakes. This is not a motivational slogan but the distilled outcome of a professional and human journey. A physician and surgeon by training, a writer and speaker by vocation, Puig has rigorously explored the intersection of science, consciousness, and human potential. His story does not begin on a stage or a printed page, but in the operating room and the clinic, where he learned that uncertainty, pressure, and the need to decide with incomplete information are part of the trade and, by extension, of life itself.

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Leading, creating, and achieving are the three fundamental skills of strategic thinking

Andres Tellez Vallejo

As buying, selling, entering, and exiting become easier, faster, and cheaper; as today’s marketplace features more information, more connected buyers and sellers, fewer frictions (time, costs, paperwork), and therefore resources (products, money, customer attention, talent) that flow more freely; technology accelerates competitive cycles, and customers raise their expectations… therefore the difference between survival and growth no longer depends on inventory or the checkbook: it lies in the ability to think, plan, and execute with strategic intent.

That is the thesis running through Rich Horwath’s work and his book Strategic: The Skill to Set Direction, Create Advantage, and Achieve Executive Excellence. The heart of his approach can be summed up with elegant clarity: being strategic is possessing insight that leads to advantage; in other words, converting learning into superior positions.

Within this frame, three core competencies articulate the discipline: insight (how one thinks), allocation (how one plans), and action (what one does).

The story begins with insight

Insight is not a clever quip; it is the ability to combine two or more pieces of information in a unique way to create new value.

Thus, a shopkeeper who notices customers buying coffee in the morning and returning for snacks in the afternoon identifies a pattern, contrasts it with average register data and cash flow, and redesigns the offer to “bundle” breakfasts and loyalty cards.

The result is not just another data point but an interpretation that generates advantage. Horwath insists on this definition because it separates noise from actionable learning: when insight leads to advantage, thinking ceases to be contemplative and becomes productive.

How to cultivate insight day to day?

  • First, train strategic observation: watch customers, competitors, and capabilities with guiding questions (“What really changed this week and why?”).
  • Second, create synthesis rituals: decision journals, hypothesis maps, and short reviews at the end of campaigns or month-end (“post-mortems”).
  • Third, practice contrast: every idea should contend with its anti-idea (“What evidence refutes my hypothesis?”).

In the book’s language, this develops strategic fitness: the ability to think with intent and turn complexity into clarity. That conditioning is not optional; it fuels the next competency.

The second competency is allocation

Every strategy, whether in a startup or in a neighborhood store, is, at bottom, a decision about where to place time, talent, and money. Allocation turns insight into a plan with priorities, sequence, and measures.

For a small-business owner, this means choosing between expanding inventory or investing in Customer Relationship Management (CRM); for a salesperson, between more new visits or deepening existing accounts; for a student-entrepreneur, between building more product features or validating pricing with pilot customers.

In Horwath’s terms, allocation is the heart of strategy: distributing scarce resources to maximize potential and create distinctive advantage.

Planning with strategic allocation requires three moves:

  • First, map a portfolio of initiatives: defend (what sustains the business today), grow (near- to mid-term bets), and transform (experiments that could rewrite the rules).
  • Second, set explicit investment criteria: expected impact, probability of success, time to results, and synergies with existing capabilities.
  • Third, commit to trade-offs: say “no” to what does not align with the chosen direction—even if it is profitable in the short term.

The book reinforces this discipline with checklists and tools usable by small teams, so planning does not become a bureaucratic ritual but a living conversation that reallocates throughout the year, not just in January.

The third competency is action

Action is what gets done, in the right sequence and cadence, so the plan actually happens (only action drives performance). Strategic action differs from frantic activity; it is recognizable by three traits.

  • First, visible priority: the initiatives with the highest strategic value have owners, dates, and early signals defined (leading indicators, metrics that move before the final outcome and therefore predict whether an initiative is on the right track).
  • Second, short-cycle learning: each sprint, in sales, operations, or marketing, ends with a decision: scale, adjust, or abandon.
  • Third, communicated coherence: the team understands why some tasks were paused and others reinforced; the decision narrative connects back to the chosen direction.

Horwath integrates this execution into his Strategic Quotient (SQ), which measures how people think, plan, and act to sustain advantage, and offers a common language for improving as a team.

Together, insight, allocation, and action form a loop of continuous improvement.

For a new entrepreneur, the cycle might look like this: identify a real customer friction (insight), bet on one primary channel and two secondary ones with measured budget (allocation), launch a minimal offer with weekly targets and review acquisition and retention indicators (action).

For an established retailer: analyze receipts (tickets) to discover purchase combinations (insight), redirect low-demand staff hours to higher-margin bundling and displays (allocation), and standardize A/B tests in pricing and merchandising every two weeks (action).

For a salesperson: segment the portfolio by real potential, not by personal affinity (insight), calendarize prospecting blocks versus follow-up with weekly goals (allocation), and document “reasons for loss” to feed back into scripts (action). The principle is universal: advantage is not inherited; it is manufactured in 3A cycles.

Horwath’s book adds a maturity point: measuring the strategic. With the Strategic Quotient and the Strategic Fitness System, teams can evaluate their habits, from the quality of their questions to the consistency of reallocating resources, making strategy a teachable competence, not a mystical talent.

For small businesses and commercial teams, this measurement reveals where value is wasted: Are ideas well-conceived but allocated by habit? Is planning rigorous but execution learning-free? Is there a lot of action but no direction? Naming the deficits is the first step toward correcting them.

It is also worth underscoring a nuance Horwath repeats: strategic is not a synonym for “long term” or “slick presentation.” It is a discipline for creating advantage today and tomorrow.

If a university teaches its students to practice the 3As in real projects, if a shop owner designs the weekly agenda around them, if a sales team turns its meetings into hypothesis labs, then strategy leaves PowerPoint and shows up in cash flow, quota attainment, and loyalty. That normalization of strategic thinking is, in itself, a barrier to imitation: while others react, the one practicing the 3As leads.

This closes with a practical conviction: strategic competence does not spring from isolated “brilliant ideas” or from “perfect plans” that never change. It arises from a rigorously lived triad: insight that interprets and discovers, allocation that chooses and forgoes, and action that tests and consolidates.

For entrepreneurs, small businesses, retailers, salespeople, and students, the call is simple and demanding: establish a weekly 3A rhythm, questions that reveal value, reallocations that concentrate it, actions that materialize it and measure it honestly.

In an environment where advantage erodes at high speed, being strategic is not a luxury; it is the everyday way of working. And, as Strategic reminds us, it is a skill that can be learned, trained, and elevated into the competitive signature of any business.

The First Attempt’s Value: Launch, Learn, and Iterate Before You Polish the Startup

Andres Tellez Vallejo

It has been repeated so often it sounds like a cliché, yet it remains true: the first attempt rarely meets expectations. This essay is not meant to discourage but to clarify a frequent confusion among those who venture out: entrepreneurs, small-business owners, shopkeepers, seasoned salespeople, and university students: starting is not the same as “doing it perfectly.” They are almost opposite. Perfection demands certainties, polish, and guarantees; starting requires movement, hypotheses, and tolerance for error. The gap between what is imagined and what is obtained in a first version is not a failure; it is the mechanism through which a project learns to become valuable.

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