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Entrepreneurship Myths: Why You Likely Won’t Be Rich and Famous
Aug 29, 2018
Author Morra Aarons-Mele discusses myths surrounding entrepreneurship, including notions about success rates, compensation and the hustle needed to succeed.
There’s a common narrative that to be successful in business or as an entrepreneur, you need to be out there. You need to be ambitious. You need to be hustling 24 hours a day, at the expense of all the rest of the things in your life. While the struggle is real, that’s not the entire story. Morra Aarons-Mele, founder of the digital agency Women Online and host of a podcast titled “Hiding in the Bathroom,” has written a book by the same name, Hiding in the Bathroom: An Introvert’s Roadmap to Getting Out There (When You’d Rather Stay Home) that examines some of the myths around entrepreneurship. A self-proclaimed hermit, she wants to help other introverts find success while staying true to themselves. Aarons-Mele joined the Knowledge@Wharton radio show, which airs on Wharton Business Radio on SiriusXM, to talk about her book and what she calls “entrepreneurship porn,” which captures some of the misguided ideas that many young Americans have about what being an entrepreneur really means.
An edited transcript of the conversation follows.
Knowledge@Wharton: Let’s start with this term “entrepreneurship porn.” How did you come up with that?
Morra Aarons-Mele: I never in my life thought that I would coin a term that’s a bit risqué. My mother doesn’t like when I talk about it. But I just had done the circuit up in Boston, where I live, of startup nights and incubator talks, and conferences for budding entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurs. Those are people who are more socially minded and might normally work in nonprofit or at NGOs but want to start a new venture in that space. I have the great fortune of being able to mentor a lot of really smart young people because I live and work near Harvard.
I just kept sitting there thinking, “Is this real? Are we selling them all a bill of goods?” My husband, who’s a professor, and I would talk about how all of the really motivated young people in business school and graduate school want to go start ventures. They want to be the next big entrepreneur. It felt kind of sad to us because the statistics are not that great. We know that most businesses fail. Most small-business owners or entrepreneurs make about $44,000 a year. If you have a Harvard Business School degree, that is not going to be your starting salary if you go work at a large institution. I just felt there was a need to pull back the curtain and be a little more honest.
Knowledge@Wharton: There’s a common statistic that 80% of startups fail, and sometimes it takes multiple attempts before entrepreneurs see any kind of success.
Aarons-Mele: And let’s not forget all the societal factors that allow those startup successes and those guys — because they usually are guys — to keep going. Who pays the bills while your startups keep failing? We have bills to pay. I think that the media and business schools have created this very glossy sense that life as an entrepreneur is somehow better. This is why I call it porn.
Knowledge@Wharton: How has that glamorization influenced entrepreneurial culture and the employment market in general? It does seem that a lot of college graduates would rather go the entrepreneurial route than work for a traditional company for a few years and then strike out on their own.
Aarons-Mele: That’s right, and you hear that from recruiters all the time. I think you just hit on something that’s really important. I always tell this to young people, and they can take my advice or leave it. I’ve had a small business for 11 years. I love it. But I think that there is true value in having institutional knowledge, working in a large organization, and having a boss that we really shouldn’t downplay. Whatever you do in your career, if you are dying to start a business at some point, that’s wonderful. But it doesn’t have to be the first thing you do.
Also, you don’t need to create a unicorn. I think a lot of [the hype] is around the idea of scale. A small business is great, but the first word in it is “small.” And in America, we don’t like small things. We don’t think they’re sexy. There’s this huge focus on scale, which I think can also be dangerous.
Knowledge@Wharton: Are you optimistic or pessimistic about where we are headed with entrepreneurship because of these issues you point out?
Aarons-Mele: I’ve got to tell you, I’m a little pessimistic right now. I see a bubble in terms of venture capital funding and money going in one direction to a lot of privileged white men, and I don’t think that’s great. But the other thing is that I think that we’re not investing in our futures. No one tells you that when you start a business, you’re probably not going to fund your retirement for at least 10 years. The statistics on entrepreneurs and small-business owners and retirement savings are dire. If we don’t take care of ourselves as leaders, no one else is.
I think it’s time for a conversation about financial well-being for small-business owners, and for thinking holistically about what this bubble in entrepreneurship is doing to our culture and the ability to buy a house, start a family and live out that version of the dream.
Knowledge@Wharton: The entrepreneurial mindset is one of hustling and networking and going 900 mph all the time. In your book, you talk about how you’re not really that type of person. You’re more of an introvert.
Aarons-Mele: I’m not just an introvert, I’m an extreme introvert and a hermit. Right now, I’m talking to you from my lovely little suburban home office, which I really don’t like to leave that much. The internet is how I maintain a window on the world, keep my networks going, do business development while I’m hiding out in my home office. One of the reasons why I wrote my book is I wanted to give people like me tools to be successful small-business owners or entrepreneurs while carving out the alone time that we need.
“Introvert” doesn’t mean that we are unable to schmooze and be on and chat or be present. We absolutely are, especially if we practice. But we need to have better control and be thoughtful about what our day looks like, about what the cadence of our year looks like, about the pace at which we work.
I wanted to bring that into the conversation. I’ve actually cross-interviewed some radio hosts who say, “This is a great job for an introvert. When I’m on, I’m on. But then I can be down.” So, I think we also need to think differently about the workday.
Knowledge@Wharton: What most people call work/life balance, you call work/life fit. Explain the difference for us.
Aarons-Mele: The term was coined by a mentor of mine, Cali Yost, [CEO and founder of Flex Strategy Group]. I love it because, first of all, work/life balance is a lie. Anyone can tell you that. I don’t like work/life balance for two other reasons. The first is that I think it’s become totally twinned with parenthood and being a working mom, and that is not good for anyone. There are a lot of people who don’t have kids at home and who really crave a life. Let’s be honest: It’s not about having kids.
The other thing is that we want to work in a way that suits us, like we just talked about. You’re on, and then you’re off for a little while. That’s your work-life fit. I have friends, clients, my husband, who love to work all the time. I don’t judge them. That’s their work-life fit. I really love my work, but I need to work in a space that I can control.
I am no good at showing up at an office for 10 hours a day and sitting in an open-plan cubicle. That’s not my thing. I’m bad at it. But give me control over my time and space, and I’m amazing. I think fit is about what works for you, with compromise at the edges, and becoming the best person you can be in your career. It’s so much healthier than balance.
Knowledge@Wharton: Do you think that’s why many companies are flexible about employee time, allowing them to work from home or set different hours?
Aarons-Mele: Cal Newport would call that your “deep work” time, the time that you can really think and be generative and do what you love to do. That’s your work/life fit. That’s what’s so awesome about it. I have a colleague at my company who’s a total nine-to-fiver. She’s amazing during those hours, she’s like a machine. But then she wants to be done. I don’t mind if my clients email me late at night. I’ve made that agreement with them as long as I have more flexibility during the day.
Gallup did a great study that I always cite. They found that 86% of working Americans said they don’t mind being reachable on their smartphone as long as they have more flexibility on how they manage their workday. That means, “I’ve got to leave for a kid’s soccer game. Please don’t give me you-know-what for it.” Or, “I might want to come in a little later to avoid traffic…. but I’m going to be reachable for you at odd hours.”
I do think work is shifting. Some really smart companies have core days, so they let employees work at home or work how they like on, maybe, Monday and Friday. But Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday are in-office days where people can see each other and do that collaboration. With technology, work is shifting and things are changing.
Knowledge@Wharton: You also touch on branding. How does an introvert use the digital culture to their benefit while also not wanting to be the kind of person who is always out there?
Aarons-Mele: I do think that the idea of the personal brand is very much in line with the culture of entrepreneurship porn. Like, if only we have enough followers on social media, we might be famous, too. We buy into this mythology. But we all know now that social media companies use us, and we should use them.
I’m a fan of being really, really strategic about how you use social media and online content to further your professional brand. I don’t say that you have to Instagram your breakfast or curate perfect shots of your perfect life. But what you should be doing is thinking about the digital channels you can use to show off how smart you are. Show off your expertise. Use social media to cultivate this sense that you are a leader, you’re a boss, you know what you’re doing and people should seek you out, especially if you’re a small-business owner or if you’re in the job market.
If you publish, if you write, if you make yourself seem an expert in your field by publishing smart content … you actually minimize the time you need to spend networking in person. It’s like an annuity. It’s working while you sleep.
Knowledge@Wharton: How has this book changed your professional and your personal life?
Aarons-Mele: It’s been incredibly wonderful just to talk to hundreds of people. I’ve talked to people at events and on call-in radio shows, and I hear how frustrated they are and how much they just want to be heard, in terms of people who are introverts but feel like they can’t perform to their fullest because they’re in the wrong environment. I want people to be heard, and I want people to stand up and ask for what they need in order to be awesome.
But I have also learned that for me, being on my book tour was the hardest thing. I hated it. I loved talking to people and learning, but it was a lot for me. I truly am a hermit, and now I am really careful to guard my time as much as possible.
I also realize that I would give things up in order to be able to maintain control over my schedule. This is what’s really important. You’re not going to be rich and famous, probably, if you need to protect your time and work in your little home office.
INNOVATION
Never Give Up: What an Entrepreneur Learned from Failure
May 25, 2018
Author Ethan Senturia discusses his new book about launching a startup that ultimately did not succeed.
Ethan Senturia thought he had it all. He graduated with honors, landed a job at Lehman Brothers, then struck out on his own when that Wall Street powerhouse shut down during the Great Recession. But Senturia quickly learned that becoming a successful entrepreneur takes much more than a great resume. Dealstruck, the online lending platform he founded, ceased operation in 2016. That experience led Senturia to rethink his long-held ideas about success. He has shared his personal journey in a new book titled, Unwound: Real-Time Reflections from a Stumbling Entrepreneur. Senturia talked about his experiences during a recent segment on the Knowledge@Wharton show on Wharton Business Radio, SiriusXM channel 111.
An edited transcript of the conversation follows.
Knowledge@Wharton: Tell us about how you started your company.
Ethan Senturia: I grew up the son of an entrepreneur and somehow made my way to Wharton thinking that the startup world and the broader world of business and finance were sort of the same thing. I learned that those were quite different. Ultimately, I went on to Wall Street and my first job was at Lehman Brothers in 2008. I was at this big institution, and they went through bankruptcy. I found that there’s not really this ideal stability out there that maybe I thought there was. I ended up going down the entrepreneurial path, following some of the things my father did. My first journey into entrepreneurship was prior to Dealstruck with a few Wharton alums. I decided to take the financial knowledge and training that I had received at school and in my first foray into the professional world and try my hand at something in the startup world….
Knowledge@Wharton: You had a lot of expectations that it was going to be a successful venture, but things turned out a little bit differently. What happened?
Senturia: Some people have their vision of success and it goes perfectly. But more often than not, even if your outcome ends up being a success, along the way you have a lot of ups and downs. Even if you know intellectually that this journey is going to be hard — there are going to be highs and lows — when you actually run up against them you realize that maybe it’s not a matter of intellect to get you through some of the hardest parts. It’s more a matter of emotional quotient and self-awareness and those sorts of things. But I think even the greatest successes have plenty of war stories. Unfortunately for me, we got down to our last dollar and then we didn’t make it.
Knowledge@Wharton: What have you learned about being an entrepreneur?
Senturia: Patience. When you’re starting your own company, you have this big vision…. You want to raise the money. You want to build the product. You want to get to market. You want to scale. Everything in the startup world is about scaling. You feel this inordinate pressure, sometimes from your investors, but sometimes just from yourself, to be the next Facebook or the next Google or to try to hit that home run. And you fail to realize that maybe these things take a long time. Solid, good companies don’t get built overnight. For every single story of a company that became a $1 billion success in two or three years, the vast majority of the success stories out there took 10-plus years. You have to slow yourself down and focus on one step at a time. If you make all the small decisions right, then those add up to the big picture. Being more patient for that success to come was a big lesson for me.
On a more personal level, we tend to associate ourselves a lot with what we do. When you run a business and you start something, it’s even more so. People have this idea that your business is your baby. As things go up and down, it’s very easy to identify yourself, your value, how successful you are based on whether your company’s going well or not, whether your job’s going well or not. The toll that takes on you and the people around you is an unhealthy side effect of entrepreneurship. I’ve tried to learn that business can go well, business can not go well, careers can go well, they can not go well, and it doesn’t necessarily mean that you are fluctuating the same as a person.
I think that’s where it can be really valuable to have strong partners or strong advisers, people around you who have been through it. People who venture out into starting their own companies, whether they’re big high-tech startups or just a bakery on the corner in the local neighborhood, tend to be people who are ambitious, who have been successful, who have intellect, and they’re not used to failure. I was pretty smart, got into a good school, got a job on Wall Street. I had a good outcome in the first startup that I was an employee at. I think a lot of people who take on the challenge of entrepreneurship have that sort of track record, and then you run into something where it’s not enough to just be smart and work hard. You need luck. You need people around you. You need the competitive landscape to cooperate. That’s a big challenge because you’re running 100 mph and hit a brick wall, and that can be a setback.
Knowledge@Wharton: How do you handle employees when things aren’t going well for your startup?
Senturia: That’s one of the hardest parts because there’s this need to be transparent with the people who work for you. You’re the entrepreneur. You started this company. You have employees. They’re working really hard to help you build your dream. They’re participating in making that dream, internalizing it on their own. As things start to get really challenging, there’s this delicate balancing act of maintaining transparency but also not distracting them to the point where they get so concerned that they can’t do the things needed to turn the business around or get it through a tough period. But it’s definitely the most challenging thing when you see people who have left stable jobs, who have all different types of economic situations at their home and in their families. You just have to try to treat them well, even as things go sideways or wind down. You have to try to help them through financially as best you can. The other ways to do it are to give back in kind and make sure that they get onto the next [step].
Knowledge@Wharton: I’m guessing a lot of the employees at Lehman didn’t get that kind of support at the end?
Senturia: No. That was a pretty interesting scene. I remember freaking out, thinking, “Oh my God, this is my first job. My career is over.” People just packed up their boxes and walked out, and there were rows of media outside the office.
There wasn’t a lot of empathy in that situation. I think that’s a missing factor oftentimes in business, where a little bit of empathy, a little bit of caring, a little bit of extra generosity, even when you’re suffering, even when you’re having a difficult time, just extending that little bit extra to your colleagues, your employees, makes a huge difference to them. It’s a small give if you can just get yourself to do it.
Knowledge@Wharton: Are leaders able to fully understand when things are going awry and a company is starting to take on water? Or does it hit you blind?
Senturia: I think it’s a little of both. There’s an illusion that I had as a first-time entrepreneur, that got debunked pretty quickly, that you have complete control. The reality is that there is no such thing as complete control. There are situations or things that come up where, despite your best efforts, you get blindsided and have to react. You can try to make the right decisions and figure out the right strategies, but that doesn’t mean that if you execute them flawlessly you’ll have complete control over the outcomes.
But there are also situations where it’s like playing whack-a-mole. Something pops up, you hit it, and then the next thing pops up and you hit it. You get into this spiral of not being able to look at anything other than your feet or your toes, and that can be a self-fulfilling prophecy or positive-feedback loop because you’re starting to look at things so close to you that you lose sight of the bigger picture and then really can’t turn things around. That is one of the challenges of being in distress.
Knowledge@Wharton: Was writing this book a bit cathartic for you?
Senturia: Absolutely. As I was going through this difficult period with the company and in my personal life as they were interconnected, people were saying, “Oh, in 20 years this is going to be the best thing that ever happened to you. Everyone fails their first time.” But I sort of said, “Gee, I’m not sure that success is going to come. I don’t know what’s going to happen in my future.” No one knows, right? But I felt that the way that I could try to make this failure feed forward into success is to study it and to look at it honestly, to take accountability for it, to try to understand what happened, what didn’t.
When we go through hard times, we tend to want to turn the page quickly, put it in the past and get onto the next. We don’t want to dig through the pain and unearth all the little thorny things hidden there.
But I felt like that was a really important exercise. I think there’s a lot to learn from it, and the book was my way of doing that. I wanted to share it with other entrepreneurs just as an example of hopefully empowering them and saying, “Don’t be afraid to fail. Don’t be afraid to try again. And don’t be afraid to look at it and study it and own it.”
Knowledge@Wharton: Do you look back at your time with Dealstruck and think of things you could have done differently?
Senturia: I guess one thing is raise more money. That’s a double-edged sword, but we had opportunities to raise more money earlier and we didn’t. I think if you have a chance to raise money and you’re an entrepreneur, take the money. Until you get that exit, you’re always fundraising. The other thing I would have done differently is probably more around the details of the product that we were originating. I think there was some product market fit that we didn’t have perfectly honed.
Knowledge@Wharton: Would you agree that small business is a critical part of the American economy and an area where there’s still a lot of growth?
Senturia: Yes. The most enjoyable part of being an entrepreneur at Dealstruck was being able to be a small part of the success of a couple thousand other entrepreneurs whom we financed. That was a big piece of our mission and a big piece of what drove me to start the company.
I would say that today the small business world is still underserved. There’s still a need for financial innovation, both from a product standpoint and a technology standpoint. There’s still a lot of great entrepreneurs tackling it. And I do think that it’s an unbelievably critical segment of the economy, of job creation. I hope that I can continue to play a role in trying to bolster it, and I know that there are a lot of other great entrepreneurs doing the same.
INNOVATION
Why Creating a Business Plan Is a ‘Waste of Time’
May 24, 2018
Economist and author Carl Schramm discusses his new book, 'Burn the Business Plan.'
A finely crafted, tightly defined, highly detailed business plan seems like a perfectly rational tool for getting your entrepreneurial ideas off the ground. But Carl Schramm thinks you should burn it. Schramm, an economist, Syracuse University professor and former president of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation — a non-profit that encourages entrepreneurship — says that crafting a business plan is one of the biggest misconceptions about how to start a company on the right footing. His new book, Burn the Business Plan: What Great Entrepreneurs Really Do, says the true blueprint for success requires innovative ideas, real-world experience and keen judgment. Schramm joined the Knowledge@Wharton show, which airs on SiriusXM channel 111, to explain why inventors and entrepreneurs should light a few matches and get on with it. (Listen to the full podcast using the player at the top of this page.)
The following is an edited transcript of the conversation.
Knowledge@Wharton: Why is a business plan unnecessary?
Carl Schramm: It’s the basis of much of the teaching about how to start a business, and so much of what’s taught is basically conjecture. My book is developed off 10 years of research that we did at the Kauffman Foundation. If you look at all our older major corporations — U.S. Steel, General Electric, IBM, American Airlines — and then you look at our newer companies like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, none of these companies ever had a business plan before they got started. Empirically, it appears as if you don’t need a business plan.
Second, the business planning process is largely generated as a preview for venture capital. As I show in my book, from empirical studies, much less than 1% of all new startups ever see a venture capitalist.
Much less than 1% of all new companies every year have venture backing of any kind. So, I largely view the creation of a business plan as something of a waste of time.The third problem is that it seems to make starting a business somewhat like a cookbook. If you do this, and then you do this, and then you do this, the cake will come out okay. And that’s really not how it happens.
Knowledge@Wharton: Let’s talk about age because many entrepreneurs are in their late 30s or 40s. These are people who made a shift in their career paths.
Schramm: Precisely. It goes to this question of, “What are we doing when we’re trying to teach high school kids?” Even grammar school children get courses and exposure to entrepreneurship. At the university level, it’s now a major in probably 3,000 colleges and universities. And the whole schema, including the notion of a business plan as the formal way to teach how to start a business in a college classroom, is geared to 20-year-olds.
Much of our mythology is that unicorn companies are started by people, like Mark Zuckerberg, who are in their 20s. But the reality is, the vast majority of people who start businesses are middle-career people who have been surprised by the fact that they actually had an idea, and their idea was good enough to build a business around.Another thing wrong with how we write about entrepreneurship, how it’s taught, is that somehow people set out to be entrepreneurs as if they set out to be a dentist or an accountant. The vast majority of entrepreneurs were really amazed to find out that they became an entrepreneur. In my case, I was a professor at Johns Hopkins for 15 years, and then one day my research sort of slapped me in the face. I said, “Holy smokes, if I want to really make this work and actually change the world, I can’t do it by writing an academic paper. I have to start a business.”
Knowledge@Wharton: How should we teach our kids about entrepreneurship?
Schramm: I don’t think [the current curriculum] can be tweaked. I think it should be abandoned. I think it should be overthrown. Because if you look empirically at where entrepreneurs come from, if they have formal training, it’s not in entrepreneurship. It’s in engineering or the STEM subjects, the technical subjects.
Many, many more entrepreneurs come out of MIT because it’s an engineering and a technical school.
Same thing for Caltech. Caltech doesn’t even teach entrepreneurship. At MIT, there’s one professor in the business program there who teaches entrepreneurship. But it doesn’t matter because if they didn’t teach it at all, these schools would be producing many, many new businesses all the time.
Knowledge@Wharton: You said not much funding comes from venture capitalists or angel investors. How are entrepreneurs getting the money they need to execute their ideas?
Schramm: One reason people can become entrepreneurs at midlife is they turn to their own savings, their own assets, to friends and families for loans. By the time you’re 40, which is the average age at which people start businesses, you’ve settled your student debt. You’ve got a house. You’re likely to have a spouse who has a job, which is a huge protection if you start a new company because she or he has health insurance and other benefits. So, most companies are self-funded.
Knowledge@Wharton: In the book, you also talk about the incubator. But you think the incubator isn’t having the desired effect that a lot of people are hoping for. Can you explain?
Schramm: Again, empirically, very few companies come out of these incubators. I was trained as a labor economist. I’m in the middle of writing an essay about incubators, and the premise is that as we turn towards 3% and 4% GDP, and much lower rates of unemployment and much higher demand for well-trained people, no one is going to want to spend time in an incubator. They can get a job. And that’s a really important part of the drama of becoming an entrepreneur.
In the book, I make the case that the most effective place to learn how to be entrepreneurial is to go into a big company. That’s where you see innovation happen. More innovation happens in big companies than, for example, university laboratories. It’s also where you learn all the skills that make a business work, where you’re exposed to what scale looks like in a business. This is critical and this is experiential knowledge. You can’t teach scale in a classroom. It has to be felt. You have to see it, to experience it.
Knowledge@Wharton: You give real-world examples in the book, including the story about vacuum cleaning company Dyson.
Schramm: Yes, Dyson is a fantastic story. James Dyson was an industrial designer by background, and he came to the view that vacuum cleaners had been a technology that hadn’t moved very far. He was using a vacuum cleaner and noticed that the more you used it, and the dirtier the dustbin got, the less power it had. This became the question that triggered his search.
Dyson built over 1,000 prototypes. He quit his job. His wife was a teacher, and he lived off a much more modest income. His wife did all the money-earning in the family. When he began to push his product out, no companies in the United States or England wanted any part of it. They resisted it because they were making a lot of money on selling paper bags for conventional, old-fashioned vacuum cleaners. He had to take it to Japan. When it became successful in Japan, American and British companies tried to steal his design. He successfully defended against that.
The best part of Dyson’s story is he never had outside investors. [Dyson] never wanted to be a public company. It’s a huge company now. He’s like most entrepreneurs. If your idea clicks and you can make it work, and you haven’t taken your company public — that is, you still control it — you’re going to work there for the rest of your life. They become places where your own creativity works, and you can keep at it. You can keep designing. Really, it becomes your life.
It’s an important point, particularly for people who are in higher education. Students in universities are programmed to think that somehow people who work in the government or in nonprofit or NGOs are somehow more creative. They’re like the people who take art and art history and design in college, or people who write music. They’re a different breed, and they’re really geniuses.
The reality is that 95% of kids graduating from college this year are going to work in companies. They’re not not creative. Look at our huge economy. That all happens because of people who are creative and gifted in business and the invention of things that help other people. And [taking] these things to market [requires] very, very creative skills.
Knowledge@Wharton: Would you say that passion and determination are two of the great qualities that a lot of entrepreneurs have?
Schramm: Yes, it’s true. Students in college are told to follow your passion and start a company. But a lot of times, the passion doesn’t make any sense. I’ve seen students who are passionate about having a web app for frying pans. I sort of make fun of it in the book. I’ve judged business plan competitions at the college level and seen the same idea come up five times. Invent a sensor for a frying pan, and it tells you on your phone when your eggs are cooked. Kids are passionate about that, but it’s not an idea that’s ever going to work. They’re making the simplicity of cooking an egg into a complex technical project.
Passion really clicks when you’ve got an idea and it starts to have market feedback. The thrill of it is when other people are saying, “What you came up with is valuable.” What they’re telling you is, “You created something out of your head that makes my life easier, and I value it. So, I’ll give my money to you for your idea.”
Knowledge@Wharton: Is Yeti one of those great ideas?
Schramm: Yeti is a fabulous story. It’s one of those things where those guys didn’t expect to be entrepreneurs. The idea snuck up on then. They love to go fishing, and they fell through regular Igloo boxes because they’re not all that well made. One of the two brothers said, “You know, what we ought to do is make a cooler that’s so sturdy, you could stand on it.” Yeti cooler came out of something just that simple.
Knowledge@Wharton: What are 20-somethings missing to be able to build that great company?
Schramm: They’re missing experience. If you really want to be an entrepreneur and you don’t have a really great idea when you’re 21, getting out of school, don’t fret. Just wait. What shall you do while you wait? Go learn stuff. The stuff you should learn is easiest learned in big businesses because you’ll go out there and watch the innovation process work.
I consult at several companies, and what I’m watching all time is these companies constantly trying to renew themselves with new, better products. They spend a lot of money on research and development. Anybody who’s working in one of these companies can see the constant iterative change that’s taking place.
You actually get innovation into your normal daily routine. I think that’s one of the greatest things that you can learn.The book points to the fact that many new companies come out of old companies. The entrepreneurs see stuff, and two routes are the way this happens. The companies decide that they’re going to stick to their core competency and reject a brand new idea. They often say to people, “if you love this idea so much, go do it with our blessing. You can have the intellectual property.” In some cases, like IBM, they actually finance the startups. That was the case with Cerner, the health care data company.The other thing is a much more difficult problem. That is, people who go to management and say, “This is the better way to do it,” or “Here’s a new application or a new market, and we have all the technology. If we configure it differently, we can own and capture this market.” MBA-type managers often say, “no, we’re going to stick to our core competency. We don’t know how to do that. It’s not our karma, it’s not our destiny.” And frustrated employees walk out. I interview people like that in the book. They say again and again, “I could have made all this money for my old employer, but they just wouldn’t listen to me.”
Knowledge@Wharton: Are companies wasting their human capital?
Schramm: It’s happening in every single company. You’ve got creative people in there. They might be running a machine. They might be on the production line. They could be any place in your company. They could be at the loading dock. They see things, and they could do things differently.
One of my favorite examples that’s not in the book is container boxes. It’s one of the great logistics revolutions that permits all of our prices for consumer goods to be much, much lower than they would have been. The boxes on the back of a trailer that come off the trailer, go right on a ship.
That was developed by a truck driver in Newark, N.J., In the old days, when trailer trucks were inflexible, they were fixed. Every time you went into a yard or a loading dock, people had to go on the dock, take the stuff off and reload it. He said, “You know, it’s a big steel box. Why don’t you just take the whole box, the whole back end of the truck, and put it on a ship?” This is a truck driver who saw that. He gave us the container revolution that made a world revolution in logistics.
Knowledge@Wharton: There are some very well-known companies like Microsoft and Apple and Facebook that didn’t have a plan at the outset. But now they are working through a variety of plans.
Schramm: That’s right. They went and tried it. We have this drive in our society. I think it’s in human nature. We don’t think that important things happen by chaotic means. If you look around, there are academics and experts who are struggling constantly to make the process of starting a business somehow logical, planned, orderly. These are sort of cookbook approaches.
You don’t have the right answer at the beginning. You never have the right answer. The market changes, technology changes. Your customers’ tastes are changing. Price points change. Your competitors change. You’ve got to be at this all the time. And a lot of times, that’s a hidden assumption in all the advice that’s given to entrepreneurs. If you crack it once, you can go right to the bank. You buy a jet. You’re over with. You do a public offering, and you’re rich and out by 30.
That’s not the case at all. You start a business, that’s only the beginning. And it’s the beginning of trying to make it big because growth is what’s important. Scale is the critical issue. The only way you can get there is constantly reacting to the market and all the signals it’s sending as to what it needs.
Source:http://kwhs.wharton.upenn.edu
In this blog, teachers, students and all those who have some kind of interest in the English language will find useful, interesting, curious and funny things to be used in their classes or for their personal enjoyment.
Saturday, September 1, 2018
La columna de Lanata-¿Y si cambia Cambiemos?, por Jorge Lanata
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
La columna de Lanata
¿Y si cambia Cambiemos?
El discurso del Presidente fue la síntesis de la falta de brújula oficial.
Jorge Lanata
Si esta semana que comienza el Gobierno no cambia, en pocas semanas no va a haber gobierno para cambiar. La frase, quizás demasiado admonitoria, no intenta ser una advertencia sino una descripción: gobernar es dirigir o inducir variables y cambios, y hace un tiempo que el Gobierno esta lejos de manejar los hechos que se producen. Siempre existe el azar, pero cuando el azar es lo único que existe, el problema es grave. Hoy el Gobierno está rodeado de situaciones que no maneja. A tal punto que hasta las buenas noticias se transformaron en malas: por primera vez en la historia el Poder Judicial actuó con rapidez e independencia, y la denuncia de los cuadernos –un hito en la historia argentina- se transformó en un remolino que nadie sabe donde puede terminar: un remolino que también puede ser un boomerang si se investiga la Patria Contratista desde su nacimiento en épocas de Menem.
En cualquier caso la verdad libera, o sana, pero mientras tanto los bancos paralizaron todo crédito destinado a la obra pública, sobreactuando una moral que solo muestran cuando se los sorprende in fraganti. El discurso de poco más de un minuto del Presidente que desencadenó la ultima corrida cambiaria fue la síntesis de la falta de brújula oficial, y hasta ahora no se conoce quienes fueron los responsables de tal desacierto. Ningún presidente toca un timbre y sale por cadena nacional: alguien previó, convocó y ordenó el mensaje.
¿Una persona en su sano juicio puede creer que un mensaje de poco más de un minuto puede ser efectivo? ¿Fue un experimento de vanguardia? La reaccion del gabinete no fue muy solidaria; todos le echaron la culpa a Macri, y Macri calló. En cualquier caso el silencio posterior al discurso fallido alimentó el vendaval: recién a la noche Dujovne murmuró unas declaraciones y a la mañana siguiente Marcos Peña dijo que vivimos en Disnyelandia.
Desde Estados Unidos llegaba que la idea era dar un mensaje privado a los bonistas, pero se entendió mal y el Gobierno lo hizo público y adelantó, a la vez, un acuerdo con el Fondo que se solicitó pero no estaba cerrado. Nadie estaba diciendo la verdad: el primer acuerdo con el Fondo no puede cumplirse y se necesita un segundo. La plata no alcanza y ellos son, hoy, los únicos que nos prestan. El problema, desde nuestro lado, sigue siendo el mismo: qué ajustar y cómo, y con qué consenso.
Cerca de la aprobación del Presupuesto, el Gobierno vio en la discusión con los gobernadores la posibilidad de ajustar unos puntos pero manteniendo para sí los ATN, esto es los aportes discrecionales del Tesoro: antes de las elecciones que mejor dar a quien uno tiene ganas. La visión extrema de esta posición es, directamente, que el acuerdo fracase y se repita el Presupuesto del año pasado. Más discrecionalidad, pero peor visto hacia el afuera.
El problema no es el ajuste en sí sino las proporciones que le tocarán a cada uno; así visto, muchos de los recortes del Gobierno no son proporcionales. Hay todavía mucho dinero que sacar de donde lo hay. Muchas de la promesas de reducir subsidios ridículos y jubilaciones especiales quedaron en meras denuncias de prensa y nunca se implementaron.
Es lógico que frente al ajuste cada uno defienda lo suyo, pero eso, a la vez, lo vuelve imposible. Por eso llevamos más de un año diciendo en estas páginas que la obligación del liderazgo político es consensuar los “aportes” de todos. Y son los que más tienen los obligados a realizar mayores aportes en una situación urgente. Nadie está discutiendo acá donde salir de vacaciones, sino como vivir todos los días. Mientras el aluvión sucede, algunos se frotan las manos: en un tiempo los activos argentinos ya estarán mas baratos que nunca y podrán hacer grandes negocios. Se equivocan quienes piensan que este es un problema que Macri, solo, debe afrontar.
Fuente:www.clarin.com
La columna de Lanata
¿Y si cambia Cambiemos?
El discurso del Presidente fue la síntesis de la falta de brújula oficial.
Jorge Lanata
Si esta semana que comienza el Gobierno no cambia, en pocas semanas no va a haber gobierno para cambiar. La frase, quizás demasiado admonitoria, no intenta ser una advertencia sino una descripción: gobernar es dirigir o inducir variables y cambios, y hace un tiempo que el Gobierno esta lejos de manejar los hechos que se producen. Siempre existe el azar, pero cuando el azar es lo único que existe, el problema es grave. Hoy el Gobierno está rodeado de situaciones que no maneja. A tal punto que hasta las buenas noticias se transformaron en malas: por primera vez en la historia el Poder Judicial actuó con rapidez e independencia, y la denuncia de los cuadernos –un hito en la historia argentina- se transformó en un remolino que nadie sabe donde puede terminar: un remolino que también puede ser un boomerang si se investiga la Patria Contratista desde su nacimiento en épocas de Menem.
En cualquier caso la verdad libera, o sana, pero mientras tanto los bancos paralizaron todo crédito destinado a la obra pública, sobreactuando una moral que solo muestran cuando se los sorprende in fraganti. El discurso de poco más de un minuto del Presidente que desencadenó la ultima corrida cambiaria fue la síntesis de la falta de brújula oficial, y hasta ahora no se conoce quienes fueron los responsables de tal desacierto. Ningún presidente toca un timbre y sale por cadena nacional: alguien previó, convocó y ordenó el mensaje.
¿Una persona en su sano juicio puede creer que un mensaje de poco más de un minuto puede ser efectivo? ¿Fue un experimento de vanguardia? La reaccion del gabinete no fue muy solidaria; todos le echaron la culpa a Macri, y Macri calló. En cualquier caso el silencio posterior al discurso fallido alimentó el vendaval: recién a la noche Dujovne murmuró unas declaraciones y a la mañana siguiente Marcos Peña dijo que vivimos en Disnyelandia.
Desde Estados Unidos llegaba que la idea era dar un mensaje privado a los bonistas, pero se entendió mal y el Gobierno lo hizo público y adelantó, a la vez, un acuerdo con el Fondo que se solicitó pero no estaba cerrado. Nadie estaba diciendo la verdad: el primer acuerdo con el Fondo no puede cumplirse y se necesita un segundo. La plata no alcanza y ellos son, hoy, los únicos que nos prestan. El problema, desde nuestro lado, sigue siendo el mismo: qué ajustar y cómo, y con qué consenso.
Cerca de la aprobación del Presupuesto, el Gobierno vio en la discusión con los gobernadores la posibilidad de ajustar unos puntos pero manteniendo para sí los ATN, esto es los aportes discrecionales del Tesoro: antes de las elecciones que mejor dar a quien uno tiene ganas. La visión extrema de esta posición es, directamente, que el acuerdo fracase y se repita el Presupuesto del año pasado. Más discrecionalidad, pero peor visto hacia el afuera.
El problema no es el ajuste en sí sino las proporciones que le tocarán a cada uno; así visto, muchos de los recortes del Gobierno no son proporcionales. Hay todavía mucho dinero que sacar de donde lo hay. Muchas de la promesas de reducir subsidios ridículos y jubilaciones especiales quedaron en meras denuncias de prensa y nunca se implementaron.
Es lógico que frente al ajuste cada uno defienda lo suyo, pero eso, a la vez, lo vuelve imposible. Por eso llevamos más de un año diciendo en estas páginas que la obligación del liderazgo político es consensuar los “aportes” de todos. Y son los que más tienen los obligados a realizar mayores aportes en una situación urgente. Nadie está discutiendo acá donde salir de vacaciones, sino como vivir todos los días. Mientras el aluvión sucede, algunos se frotan las manos: en un tiempo los activos argentinos ya estarán mas baratos que nunca y podrán hacer grandes negocios. Se equivocan quienes piensan que este es un problema que Macri, solo, debe afrontar.
Fuente:www.clarin.com
Wednesday, August 29, 2018
POLÍTICA | ANÁLISIS-Una contradicción en la incesante crisis económica, por Joaquín Morales Solá
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
POLÍTICA | ANÁLISIS
Una contradicción en la incesante crisis económica
Joaquín Morales Solá
29 de Agosto de 2018
Hay una contradicción notable en la incesante crisis económica. Mauricio Macri es el presidente de la democracia argentina con mayor nivel de apoyo en el mundo político internacional. Los gobiernos de los principales países del mundo han manifestado su respaldo explícito al mandatario argentino. No valoran solo lo que hace, sino también el contraste con el gobierno que existió en la Argentina hasta diciembre de 2015. Sin embargo, los mercados lo están castigando como si fuera una versión argentina de Nicolás Maduro o la continuidad de Cristina Kirchner.
¿Qué explica esa contradicción? Si bien la división que provocó la globalización entre el poder político mundial y los mercados (que tienen su propio poder) podría ser una razón, el argumento es muy parcial.
Los economistas ortodoxos se frotan las manos: la historia les dio la razón, dicen, porque ellos criticaron desde el principio la política gradualista, que debió ser modificada cuando resta poco más de un año para las elecciones que decidirán -o no- la reelección de Macri. La verdad no está nunca de un solo lado. Quizá el error de Macri haya sido el excesivo optimismo con que encaró los primeros años de su gestión.
Creyó que el crecimiento del país terminaría licuando el déficit fiscal con solo congelar el gasto público en valores constantes. Al aumentar el PBI, caería automáticamente el porcentaje del déficit sobre el PBI. El proyecto habría sido perfecto si todo hubiera ocurrido sin sobresaltos. El problema es que no hay nada más imprevisible que la economía internacional. Aquel programa se convirtió entonces en un riesgoso juego a suerte y verdad, a ganar o morir.
En aquellos planes no figuraba tampoco la profundidad de la sequía, que significó una pérdida para el país de entre 8000 y 10.000 millones de dólares. Ni incluían las dudas del expresidente del Banco Central Federico Sturzenegger, un académico brillante que dejó escapar unos 15.000 millones de dólares de las reservas cuando sucedió la crisis cambiaria de abril y mayo.
Encima, el dólar se fortaleció en el mundo y aumentaron las tasas de interés. Todos los países emergentes sufrieron sus consecuencias, pero la Argentina las padeció aún más porque el gradualismo necesitaba desesperadamente del financiamiento internacional. Los fondos se agotaron porque ya los mercados internacionales estaban hastiados de bonos argentinos en un momento en que los dólares volvían a las economías más seguras, sobre todo a la de los Estados Unidos.
Fuente: LA NACION
Donald Trump no hizo nada que afectara a Macri, pero sus políticas dañaron la política y la solvencia del único presidente en el mundo que conocía al jefe de la Casa Blanca desde que los dos eran hombres de negocios. De hecho, el gobierno de Washington fue decisivo para que el Fondo Monetario Internacional le otorgara a la Argentina un crédito de un volumen inédito. Pero las peleas de Trump con China y con Turquía inyectaron más inestabilidad en la economía internacional y los capitales se encerraron en las economías solventes.
El caso de Turquía se parece mucho al de la Argentina por su déficit de cuenta corriente (en Ankara, como en Buenos Aires, gastan más dólares de los que producen). La política puede distinguir entre un presidente democrático y un sátrapa sin atenuantes, como es el presidente turco, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, pero los mercados no hacen esa clase de distinciones. La crisis de Turquía golpeó a una Argentina que se estaba levantando del último golpe. Ahora se le agregó también la inestabilidad electoral de Brasil (donde las preferencias oscilan entre un candidato preso y un neofascista), país que es el principal destino de las exportaciones industriales argentinas y el principal socio comercial de la Argentina.
El escandaloso caso de los cuadernos le agregó, además, una secuela inesperada a la economía. Muchas empresas involucradas en la investigación judicial proyectaban participar del programa de obras públicas con recursos estatales y privados. Las empresas privadas iban a recurrir al crédito bancario, pero el protocolo de la mayoría de los bancos les prohíbe darles créditos a empresas comprometidas en causas penales.
No se perjudicaron solo las empresas de la construcción, sino también otras que nada tienen que ver con el caso de los cuadernos. Son compañías que habían programado colocar bonos por varios miles de millones de dólares en el exterior para invertirlos en la Argentina, pero que decidieron postergar las operaciones por la suba del riesgo país, que significa un aumento considerable en la tasa de interés.
¿Es malo entonces que esté sucediendo la investigación judicial más importante de la historia por casos de corrupción? No es malo. Todo lo contrario: gran parte de la vieja Argentina corporativa y propensa a recurrir a los métodos corruptos explica también la constante crisis de su economía.
En ese contexto, nadie sabe ahora cuánto cuesta el dólar. Cualquier cifra es posible para grandes, pequeños o medianos inversores. En julio se compraron para atesorar 3350 millones de dólares, casi tanto como en el peor mes de Cristina Kirchner, octubre de 2011. No se trató de una corrida porque los pesos pasaron a dólares y se quedaron en cuentas de ahorro de los bancos. La sociedad o las empresas no desconfían de los bancos, sino del precio del dólar. Para peor, algunos economistas (y algunos cercanos al oficialismo) atizan el fuego pidiendo un dólar más caro todavía, como si eso no influyera en la inflación y no significara, en los hechos, una caída vertical del valor del salario.
El único mecanismo interno que le queda al Gobierno es la aprobación rápida del presupuesto para 2019. Puede pedir más ayuda externa, pero tanto en el exterior como en el interior del país están esperando un mensaje de sensatez de su dirigencia política.
El presupuesto no se aprobará sin el asentimiento de un sector importante del peronismo, como el que responde a Sergio Massa y los legisladores que tienen como referentes a sus gobernadores. Según el jefe del bloque justicialista del Senado, Miguel Pichetto, los gobernadores peronistas más importantes están dispuestos a contribuir a la aprobación del presupuesto. La cuestión más conflictiva será (o ya es) la propuesta del Gobierno de bajar por un tiempo el nivel de la coparticipación que distribuye entre las provincias.
Esa decisión necesita de una mayoría especial en el Congreso: la mayoría absoluta de las dos cámaras. Es decir, la mitad más uno de todos los integrantes de cada cuerpo, no solo de los que están presentes en el recinto. Son 138 diputados y 38 senadores los que deberán aprobar esa decisión. Al revés que otros años, el presupuesto requiere esta vez que el acuerdo sea previo a la presentación en el Congreso de esa ley fundamental del Estado.
En la era de Macri las provincias recibieron más recursos que durante toda la gestión de Cristina. Ahora casi todas están con superávit o con sus economías equilibradas. Pueden hacer un sacrificio. El conflicto de Macri no es el presupuesto de 2019, sino el de este año. El peronismo se lo enrostra. El presupuesto de 2018 preveía una inflación del 15,7 por ciento (será del 34, con suerte); un dólar a 19,3 pesos (ayer tocó los 32 pesos); un crecimiento del 3,5 por ciento (Nicolás Dujovne acaba de reconocer que habrá una caída del uno por ciento, en el mejor de los casos), y una expansión del consumo del 3,3 por ciento (hasta mayo el consumo cayó un 2 por ciento y se espera un descenso del 4 por ciento entre julio y septiembre).
Es la consecuencia de drásticos cambios en la economía internacional, de errores locales, de gestos de los opositores de Macri (como el proyecto de ley que congelaba las tarifas de servicios públicos) y de la siempre frágil economía de los argentinos. La democracia argentina divagó durante demasiado tiempo entre políticas e ideologías y creyó que todo era posible con simple voluntarismo. El tiempo de los charlatanes se agotó.
Fuente:www.lanacion.com.ar
POLÍTICA | ANÁLISIS
Una contradicción en la incesante crisis económica
Joaquín Morales Solá
29 de Agosto de 2018
Hay una contradicción notable en la incesante crisis económica. Mauricio Macri es el presidente de la democracia argentina con mayor nivel de apoyo en el mundo político internacional. Los gobiernos de los principales países del mundo han manifestado su respaldo explícito al mandatario argentino. No valoran solo lo que hace, sino también el contraste con el gobierno que existió en la Argentina hasta diciembre de 2015. Sin embargo, los mercados lo están castigando como si fuera una versión argentina de Nicolás Maduro o la continuidad de Cristina Kirchner.
¿Qué explica esa contradicción? Si bien la división que provocó la globalización entre el poder político mundial y los mercados (que tienen su propio poder) podría ser una razón, el argumento es muy parcial.
Los economistas ortodoxos se frotan las manos: la historia les dio la razón, dicen, porque ellos criticaron desde el principio la política gradualista, que debió ser modificada cuando resta poco más de un año para las elecciones que decidirán -o no- la reelección de Macri. La verdad no está nunca de un solo lado. Quizá el error de Macri haya sido el excesivo optimismo con que encaró los primeros años de su gestión.
Creyó que el crecimiento del país terminaría licuando el déficit fiscal con solo congelar el gasto público en valores constantes. Al aumentar el PBI, caería automáticamente el porcentaje del déficit sobre el PBI. El proyecto habría sido perfecto si todo hubiera ocurrido sin sobresaltos. El problema es que no hay nada más imprevisible que la economía internacional. Aquel programa se convirtió entonces en un riesgoso juego a suerte y verdad, a ganar o morir.
En aquellos planes no figuraba tampoco la profundidad de la sequía, que significó una pérdida para el país de entre 8000 y 10.000 millones de dólares. Ni incluían las dudas del expresidente del Banco Central Federico Sturzenegger, un académico brillante que dejó escapar unos 15.000 millones de dólares de las reservas cuando sucedió la crisis cambiaria de abril y mayo.
Encima, el dólar se fortaleció en el mundo y aumentaron las tasas de interés. Todos los países emergentes sufrieron sus consecuencias, pero la Argentina las padeció aún más porque el gradualismo necesitaba desesperadamente del financiamiento internacional. Los fondos se agotaron porque ya los mercados internacionales estaban hastiados de bonos argentinos en un momento en que los dólares volvían a las economías más seguras, sobre todo a la de los Estados Unidos.
Fuente: LA NACION
Donald Trump no hizo nada que afectara a Macri, pero sus políticas dañaron la política y la solvencia del único presidente en el mundo que conocía al jefe de la Casa Blanca desde que los dos eran hombres de negocios. De hecho, el gobierno de Washington fue decisivo para que el Fondo Monetario Internacional le otorgara a la Argentina un crédito de un volumen inédito. Pero las peleas de Trump con China y con Turquía inyectaron más inestabilidad en la economía internacional y los capitales se encerraron en las economías solventes.
El caso de Turquía se parece mucho al de la Argentina por su déficit de cuenta corriente (en Ankara, como en Buenos Aires, gastan más dólares de los que producen). La política puede distinguir entre un presidente democrático y un sátrapa sin atenuantes, como es el presidente turco, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, pero los mercados no hacen esa clase de distinciones. La crisis de Turquía golpeó a una Argentina que se estaba levantando del último golpe. Ahora se le agregó también la inestabilidad electoral de Brasil (donde las preferencias oscilan entre un candidato preso y un neofascista), país que es el principal destino de las exportaciones industriales argentinas y el principal socio comercial de la Argentina.
El escandaloso caso de los cuadernos le agregó, además, una secuela inesperada a la economía. Muchas empresas involucradas en la investigación judicial proyectaban participar del programa de obras públicas con recursos estatales y privados. Las empresas privadas iban a recurrir al crédito bancario, pero el protocolo de la mayoría de los bancos les prohíbe darles créditos a empresas comprometidas en causas penales.
No se perjudicaron solo las empresas de la construcción, sino también otras que nada tienen que ver con el caso de los cuadernos. Son compañías que habían programado colocar bonos por varios miles de millones de dólares en el exterior para invertirlos en la Argentina, pero que decidieron postergar las operaciones por la suba del riesgo país, que significa un aumento considerable en la tasa de interés.
¿Es malo entonces que esté sucediendo la investigación judicial más importante de la historia por casos de corrupción? No es malo. Todo lo contrario: gran parte de la vieja Argentina corporativa y propensa a recurrir a los métodos corruptos explica también la constante crisis de su economía.
En ese contexto, nadie sabe ahora cuánto cuesta el dólar. Cualquier cifra es posible para grandes, pequeños o medianos inversores. En julio se compraron para atesorar 3350 millones de dólares, casi tanto como en el peor mes de Cristina Kirchner, octubre de 2011. No se trató de una corrida porque los pesos pasaron a dólares y se quedaron en cuentas de ahorro de los bancos. La sociedad o las empresas no desconfían de los bancos, sino del precio del dólar. Para peor, algunos economistas (y algunos cercanos al oficialismo) atizan el fuego pidiendo un dólar más caro todavía, como si eso no influyera en la inflación y no significara, en los hechos, una caída vertical del valor del salario.
El único mecanismo interno que le queda al Gobierno es la aprobación rápida del presupuesto para 2019. Puede pedir más ayuda externa, pero tanto en el exterior como en el interior del país están esperando un mensaje de sensatez de su dirigencia política.
El presupuesto no se aprobará sin el asentimiento de un sector importante del peronismo, como el que responde a Sergio Massa y los legisladores que tienen como referentes a sus gobernadores. Según el jefe del bloque justicialista del Senado, Miguel Pichetto, los gobernadores peronistas más importantes están dispuestos a contribuir a la aprobación del presupuesto. La cuestión más conflictiva será (o ya es) la propuesta del Gobierno de bajar por un tiempo el nivel de la coparticipación que distribuye entre las provincias.
Esa decisión necesita de una mayoría especial en el Congreso: la mayoría absoluta de las dos cámaras. Es decir, la mitad más uno de todos los integrantes de cada cuerpo, no solo de los que están presentes en el recinto. Son 138 diputados y 38 senadores los que deberán aprobar esa decisión. Al revés que otros años, el presupuesto requiere esta vez que el acuerdo sea previo a la presentación en el Congreso de esa ley fundamental del Estado.
En la era de Macri las provincias recibieron más recursos que durante toda la gestión de Cristina. Ahora casi todas están con superávit o con sus economías equilibradas. Pueden hacer un sacrificio. El conflicto de Macri no es el presupuesto de 2019, sino el de este año. El peronismo se lo enrostra. El presupuesto de 2018 preveía una inflación del 15,7 por ciento (será del 34, con suerte); un dólar a 19,3 pesos (ayer tocó los 32 pesos); un crecimiento del 3,5 por ciento (Nicolás Dujovne acaba de reconocer que habrá una caída del uno por ciento, en el mejor de los casos), y una expansión del consumo del 3,3 por ciento (hasta mayo el consumo cayó un 2 por ciento y se espera un descenso del 4 por ciento entre julio y septiembre).
Es la consecuencia de drásticos cambios en la economía internacional, de errores locales, de gestos de los opositores de Macri (como el proyecto de ley que congelaba las tarifas de servicios públicos) y de la siempre frágil economía de los argentinos. La democracia argentina divagó durante demasiado tiempo entre políticas e ideologías y creyó que todo era posible con simple voluntarismo. El tiempo de los charlatanes se agotó.
Fuente:www.lanacion.com.ar
Sunday, August 26, 2018
TED TALKS-Chetna Gala Sinha: How women in rural India turned courage into capital
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
TED2018 | April 2018
Chetna Gala Sinha: How women in rural India turned courage into capital
When bankers refused to serve her neighbors in rural India, Chetna Gala Sinha did the next best thing: she opened a bank of her own, the first ever for and by women in the country. In this inspiring talk, she shares stories of the women who encouraged her and continue to push her to come up with solutions for those denied traditional financial backing.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Chetna Gala Sinha · Banker, social entrepreneur
Chetna Gala Sinha is the founder and chair of the Mann Deshi Bank, aimed at the needs of rural women micro-entrepreneurs in India.
Transcript:
I'm here to tell you not just my story but stories of exceptional women from India whom I've met. They continue to inspire me, teach me, guide me in my journey of my life. These are incredible women. They never had an opportunity to go to school, they had no degrees, no travel, no exposure. Ordinary women who did extraordinary things with the greatest of their courage, wisdom and humility. These are my teachers.
For the last three decades, I've been working, staying and living in India and working with women in rural India. I was born and brought up in Mumbai. When I was in college, I met Jayaprakash Narayan, famous Gandhian leader who inspired youth to work in rural India. I went into the villages to work in rural India. I was part of land rights movement, farmers' movement and women's movement. On the same line, I ended up in a very small village, fell in love with a young, handsome, dynamic young farmer-leader who was not very educated, but he could pull the crowd. And so in the passion of youth, I married him and left Mumbai, and went to a small village which did not have running water and no toilet. Honestly, my family and friends were horrified.
I was staying with my family, with my three children in the village, and one day, a few years later one day, a woman called Kantabai came to me. Kantabai said, "I want to open a saving account. I want to save." I asked Kantabai: "You are doing business of blacksmith. Do you have enough money to save? You are staying on the street. Can you save?" Kantabai was insistent. She said, "I want to save because I want to buy a plastic sheet before the monsoons arrive. I want to save my family from rain." I went with Kantabai to the bank. Kantabai wanted to save 10 rupees a day -- less than 15 cents. Bank manager refused to open the account of Kantabai. He said Kantabai's amount is too small and it's not worth his time. Kantabai was not asking any loan from the bank. She was not asking any subsidy or grant from the government. What she was asking was to have a safe place to save her hard-earned money. And that was her right. And I went -- I said if banks are not opening the account of Kantabai, why not start the bank which will give an opportunity for women like Kantabai to save? And I applied for the banking license to Reserve Bank of India.
No, it was not an easy task. Our license was rejected --
on the grounds -- Reserve Bank said that we cannot issue a license to the bank who's promoting members who are nonliterate. I was terrified. I was crying. And by coming back home, I was continuously crying. I told Kantabai and other women that we couldn't get the license because our women are nonliterate. Our women said, "Stop crying. We will learn to read and write and apply again, so what?"
We started our literacy classes. Every day our women would come. They were so determined that after working the whole day, they would come to the class and learn to read and write. After five months, we applied again, but this time I didn't go alone. Fifteen women accompanied me to Reserve Bank of India. Our women told the officer of Reserve Bank, "You rejected the license because we cannot read and write. You rejected the license because we are nonliterate." But they said, "There were no schools when we were growing, so we are not responsible for our noneducation." And they said, "We cannot read and write, but we can count."
And they challenged the officer. "Then tell us to calculate the interest of any principal amount."
"If we are unable to do it, don't give us license. Tell your officers to do it without a calculator and see who can calculate faster."
Needless to say, we got the banking license.
Today, more than 100,000 women are banking with us and we have more than 20 million dollars of capital. This is all women's savings, women capital, no outside investors asking for a business plan. No. It's our own rural women's savings.
I also want to say that yes, after we got the license, today Kantabai has her own house and is staying with her family in her own house for herself and her family.
When we started our banking operations, I could see that our women were not able to come to the bank because they used to lose the working day. I thought if women are not coming to the bank, bank will go to them, and we started doorstep banking. Recently, we starting digital banking. Digital banking required to remember a PIN number. Our women said, "We don't want a PIN number. That's not a good idea." And we tried to explain to them that maybe you should remember the PIN number; we will help you to remember the PIN number. They were firm. They said, "suggest something else," and they --
and they said, "What about thumb?" I thought that's a great idea. We'll link that digital banking with biometric, and now women use the digital financial transaction by using the thumb. And you know what they said? They said, "Anybody can steal my PIN number and take away my hard-earned money, but nobody can steal my thumb."
That reinforced the teaching which I have always learned from women: never provide poor solutions to poor people. They are smart.
A few months later, another woman came to the bank -- Kerabai. She mortgaged her gold and took the loan. I asked Kerabai, "Why are you mortgaging your precious jewelry and taking a loan?" Kerabai said, "Don't you realize that it's a terrible drought? There's no food or fodder for the animals. No water. I'm mortgaging gold to buy food and fodder for my animals." And then she asks me, "Can I mortgage gold and get water?" I had no answer. Kerabai challenged me: "You're working in the village with women and finance, but what if one day there's no water? If you leave this village, with whom are you going to do banking?" Kerabai had a valid question, so in this drought, we decided to start the cattle camp in the area. It's where farmers can bring their animals to one place and get fodder and water. It didn't rain. Cattle camp was extended for 18 months. Kerabai used to move around in the cattle camp and sing the songs of encouragement. Kerabai became very popular. It rained and cattle camp was ended, but after cattle camp ended, Kerabai came to our radio -- we have community radio which has more than 100,000 listeners. She said, "I want to have a regular show on the radio." Our radio manager said, "Kerabai, you cannot read and write. How will you write the script?" You know what she replied? "I cannot read and write, but I can sing. What's the big deal?"
And today, Kerabai is doing a regular radio program, and not only that, she's become a famous radio jockey and she has been invited by all of the radios, even from Mumbai. She gets the invitation and she does the show.
Kerabai has become a local celebrity. One day I asked Kerabai, "How did you end up singing?" She said, "Shall I tell you the real fact? When I was pregnant with my first child, I was always hungry. I did not have enough food to eat. I did not have enough money to buy food, and so to forget my hunger, I started singing." So strong and wise, no? I always think that our women overcome so many obstacles -- cultural, social, financial -- and they find out their ways.
I would like to share another story: Sunita Kamble. She has taken a course in a business school, and she has become a veterinary doctor. She's Dalit; she comes from an untouchable caste, but she does artificial insemination in goats. It is a very male-dominated profession and it is all the more difficult for Sunita because Sunita comes from an untouchable caste. But she worked very hard. She did successful goat deliveries in the region and she became a famous goat doctor. Recently, she got a national award. I went to Sunita's house to celebrate -- to congratulate her. When I entered the village, I saw a big cutout of Sunita. Sunita was smiling on that picture. I was really surprised to see an untouchable, coming from the village, having a big cutout at the entrance of the village. When I went to her house, I was even more amazed because upper caste leaders -- men -- were sitting in the house, in her house, and having chai and water, which is very rare in India. Upper caste leaders do not go to an untouchable's house and have chai or water. And they were requesting her to come and address the gathering of the village. Sunita broke centuries-old caste conditioning in India.
Let me come to what the younger generations do. As I'm standing here -- I'm so proud as I stand here, from Mhaswad to Vancouver. Back home, Sarita Bhise -- she's not even 16 years old. She's preparing herself -- she's a part of our sports program, Champions' program. She's preparing herself to represent India in field hockey. And you know where she's going? She's going to represent in 2020 Olympics, Tokyo.
Sarita comes from a very poor shepherd community. I am just -- I couldn't be more proud of her.
There are millions of women like Sarita, Kerabai, Sunita, who can be around you also. They can be all over the world, but at first glance you may think that they do not have anything to say, they do not have anything to share. You would be so wrong. I am so lucky that I'm working with these women. They are sharing their stories with me, they are sharing their wisdom with me, and I'm just lucky to be with them. 20 years before -- and I'm so proud -- we went to Reserve Bank of India and we set up the first rural women's bank. Today they are pushing me to go to National Stock Exchange to set up the first fund dedicated to micro rural women entrepreneurs. They are pushing me to set up the first small finance women's bank in the world. And as one of them said, "My courage is my capital." And I say here, their courage is my capital. And if you want, it can be yours also.
Thank you.
Source:www.ted.com
TED2018 | April 2018
Chetna Gala Sinha: How women in rural India turned courage into capital
When bankers refused to serve her neighbors in rural India, Chetna Gala Sinha did the next best thing: she opened a bank of her own, the first ever for and by women in the country. In this inspiring talk, she shares stories of the women who encouraged her and continue to push her to come up with solutions for those denied traditional financial backing.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Chetna Gala Sinha · Banker, social entrepreneur
Chetna Gala Sinha is the founder and chair of the Mann Deshi Bank, aimed at the needs of rural women micro-entrepreneurs in India.
Transcript:
I'm here to tell you not just my story but stories of exceptional women from India whom I've met. They continue to inspire me, teach me, guide me in my journey of my life. These are incredible women. They never had an opportunity to go to school, they had no degrees, no travel, no exposure. Ordinary women who did extraordinary things with the greatest of their courage, wisdom and humility. These are my teachers.
For the last three decades, I've been working, staying and living in India and working with women in rural India. I was born and brought up in Mumbai. When I was in college, I met Jayaprakash Narayan, famous Gandhian leader who inspired youth to work in rural India. I went into the villages to work in rural India. I was part of land rights movement, farmers' movement and women's movement. On the same line, I ended up in a very small village, fell in love with a young, handsome, dynamic young farmer-leader who was not very educated, but he could pull the crowd. And so in the passion of youth, I married him and left Mumbai, and went to a small village which did not have running water and no toilet. Honestly, my family and friends were horrified.
I was staying with my family, with my three children in the village, and one day, a few years later one day, a woman called Kantabai came to me. Kantabai said, "I want to open a saving account. I want to save." I asked Kantabai: "You are doing business of blacksmith. Do you have enough money to save? You are staying on the street. Can you save?" Kantabai was insistent. She said, "I want to save because I want to buy a plastic sheet before the monsoons arrive. I want to save my family from rain." I went with Kantabai to the bank. Kantabai wanted to save 10 rupees a day -- less than 15 cents. Bank manager refused to open the account of Kantabai. He said Kantabai's amount is too small and it's not worth his time. Kantabai was not asking any loan from the bank. She was not asking any subsidy or grant from the government. What she was asking was to have a safe place to save her hard-earned money. And that was her right. And I went -- I said if banks are not opening the account of Kantabai, why not start the bank which will give an opportunity for women like Kantabai to save? And I applied for the banking license to Reserve Bank of India.
No, it was not an easy task. Our license was rejected --
on the grounds -- Reserve Bank said that we cannot issue a license to the bank who's promoting members who are nonliterate. I was terrified. I was crying. And by coming back home, I was continuously crying. I told Kantabai and other women that we couldn't get the license because our women are nonliterate. Our women said, "Stop crying. We will learn to read and write and apply again, so what?"
We started our literacy classes. Every day our women would come. They were so determined that after working the whole day, they would come to the class and learn to read and write. After five months, we applied again, but this time I didn't go alone. Fifteen women accompanied me to Reserve Bank of India. Our women told the officer of Reserve Bank, "You rejected the license because we cannot read and write. You rejected the license because we are nonliterate." But they said, "There were no schools when we were growing, so we are not responsible for our noneducation." And they said, "We cannot read and write, but we can count."
And they challenged the officer. "Then tell us to calculate the interest of any principal amount."
"If we are unable to do it, don't give us license. Tell your officers to do it without a calculator and see who can calculate faster."
Needless to say, we got the banking license.
Today, more than 100,000 women are banking with us and we have more than 20 million dollars of capital. This is all women's savings, women capital, no outside investors asking for a business plan. No. It's our own rural women's savings.
I also want to say that yes, after we got the license, today Kantabai has her own house and is staying with her family in her own house for herself and her family.
When we started our banking operations, I could see that our women were not able to come to the bank because they used to lose the working day. I thought if women are not coming to the bank, bank will go to them, and we started doorstep banking. Recently, we starting digital banking. Digital banking required to remember a PIN number. Our women said, "We don't want a PIN number. That's not a good idea." And we tried to explain to them that maybe you should remember the PIN number; we will help you to remember the PIN number. They were firm. They said, "suggest something else," and they --
and they said, "What about thumb?" I thought that's a great idea. We'll link that digital banking with biometric, and now women use the digital financial transaction by using the thumb. And you know what they said? They said, "Anybody can steal my PIN number and take away my hard-earned money, but nobody can steal my thumb."
That reinforced the teaching which I have always learned from women: never provide poor solutions to poor people. They are smart.
A few months later, another woman came to the bank -- Kerabai. She mortgaged her gold and took the loan. I asked Kerabai, "Why are you mortgaging your precious jewelry and taking a loan?" Kerabai said, "Don't you realize that it's a terrible drought? There's no food or fodder for the animals. No water. I'm mortgaging gold to buy food and fodder for my animals." And then she asks me, "Can I mortgage gold and get water?" I had no answer. Kerabai challenged me: "You're working in the village with women and finance, but what if one day there's no water? If you leave this village, with whom are you going to do banking?" Kerabai had a valid question, so in this drought, we decided to start the cattle camp in the area. It's where farmers can bring their animals to one place and get fodder and water. It didn't rain. Cattle camp was extended for 18 months. Kerabai used to move around in the cattle camp and sing the songs of encouragement. Kerabai became very popular. It rained and cattle camp was ended, but after cattle camp ended, Kerabai came to our radio -- we have community radio which has more than 100,000 listeners. She said, "I want to have a regular show on the radio." Our radio manager said, "Kerabai, you cannot read and write. How will you write the script?" You know what she replied? "I cannot read and write, but I can sing. What's the big deal?"
And today, Kerabai is doing a regular radio program, and not only that, she's become a famous radio jockey and she has been invited by all of the radios, even from Mumbai. She gets the invitation and she does the show.
Kerabai has become a local celebrity. One day I asked Kerabai, "How did you end up singing?" She said, "Shall I tell you the real fact? When I was pregnant with my first child, I was always hungry. I did not have enough food to eat. I did not have enough money to buy food, and so to forget my hunger, I started singing." So strong and wise, no? I always think that our women overcome so many obstacles -- cultural, social, financial -- and they find out their ways.
I would like to share another story: Sunita Kamble. She has taken a course in a business school, and she has become a veterinary doctor. She's Dalit; she comes from an untouchable caste, but she does artificial insemination in goats. It is a very male-dominated profession and it is all the more difficult for Sunita because Sunita comes from an untouchable caste. But she worked very hard. She did successful goat deliveries in the region and she became a famous goat doctor. Recently, she got a national award. I went to Sunita's house to celebrate -- to congratulate her. When I entered the village, I saw a big cutout of Sunita. Sunita was smiling on that picture. I was really surprised to see an untouchable, coming from the village, having a big cutout at the entrance of the village. When I went to her house, I was even more amazed because upper caste leaders -- men -- were sitting in the house, in her house, and having chai and water, which is very rare in India. Upper caste leaders do not go to an untouchable's house and have chai or water. And they were requesting her to come and address the gathering of the village. Sunita broke centuries-old caste conditioning in India.
Let me come to what the younger generations do. As I'm standing here -- I'm so proud as I stand here, from Mhaswad to Vancouver. Back home, Sarita Bhise -- she's not even 16 years old. She's preparing herself -- she's a part of our sports program, Champions' program. She's preparing herself to represent India in field hockey. And you know where she's going? She's going to represent in 2020 Olympics, Tokyo.
Sarita comes from a very poor shepherd community. I am just -- I couldn't be more proud of her.
There are millions of women like Sarita, Kerabai, Sunita, who can be around you also. They can be all over the world, but at first glance you may think that they do not have anything to say, they do not have anything to share. You would be so wrong. I am so lucky that I'm working with these women. They are sharing their stories with me, they are sharing their wisdom with me, and I'm just lucky to be with them. 20 years before -- and I'm so proud -- we went to Reserve Bank of India and we set up the first rural women's bank. Today they are pushing me to go to National Stock Exchange to set up the first fund dedicated to micro rural women entrepreneurs. They are pushing me to set up the first small finance women's bank in the world. And as one of them said, "My courage is my capital." And I say here, their courage is my capital. And if you want, it can be yours also.
Thank you.
Source:www.ted.com
TED TALKS-Leticia Gasca:Don´t fail fast-fail mindfully
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
TED Salon: Brightline Initiative | June 2018
Leticia Gasca:Don´t fail fast-fail mindfully
We celebrate bold entrepreneurs whose ingenuity led them to success, but what happens to those who fail? Far too often, they bury their stories out of shame or humiliation -- and miss out on a valuable opportunity for growth, says author and entrepreneur Leticia Gasca. In this thoughtful talk, Gasca calls for business owners to open up about their failures and makes the case for replacing the idea of "failing fast" with a new mantra: fail mindfully.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Leticia Gasca · Author, entrepreneur
Leticia Gasca is co-founder of the movement Fuckup Nights and Executive Director for the Failure Institute, the first think tank in the world devoted to studying business failure and the reasons behind it.
Transcript:
[This talk contains mature language Viewer discretion is advised]
If we traveled back to the year 800 BC, in Greece, we would see that merchants whose businesses failed were forced to sit in the marketplace with a basket over their heads. In premodern Italy, failed business owners, who had outstanding debts, were taken totally naked to the public square where they had to bang their butts against a special stone while a crowd jeered at them. In the 17th century in France, failed business owners were taken to the center of the market, where the beginning of their bankruptcy was publicly announced. And in order to avoid immediate imprisonment, they had to wear a green bonnet so that everyone knew they were a failure. Of course, these are extreme examples. But it is important to remember that when we excessively punish those who fail, we stifle innovation and business creation, the engines of economic growth in any country.
Time has passed, and today we don't publicly humiliate failed entrepreneurs. And they don't broadcast their failures on social media. In fact, I think that all of us can relate with the pain of failure. But we don't share the details of those experiences. And I totally get it, my friends, I have also been there.
I had a business that failed and sharing that story was incredibly hard. In fact, it required seven years, a good dose of vulnerability and the company of my friends. This is my failure story.
When I was in college, studying business, I met a group of indigenous women. They lived in a poor rural community in the state of Puebla, in central Mexico. They made beautiful handmade products. And when I met them and I saw their work, I decided I wanted to help.
With some friends, I cofounded a social enterprise with the mission to help the women create an income stream and improve their quality of life. We did everything by the book, as we had learned in business school. We got investors, we spent a lot of time building the business and training the women. But soon we realized we were novices. The handmade products were not selling, and the financial plan we had made was totally unrealistic. In fact, we worked for years without a salary, hoping that a miracle would happen, that magically a great buyer would arrive and she would make the business profitable. But that miracle never happened.
In the end, we had to close the business, and that broke my heart. I started everything to create a positive impact on the life of the artisans. And I felt that I have done the opposite. I felt so guilty that I decided to hide this failure from my conversations and my resume for years. I didn't know other failed entrepreneurs, and I thought I was the only loser in the world.
One night, seven years later, I was out with some friends and we were talking about the life of the entrepreneur. And of course, the issue of failure came out. I decided to confess to my friends the story of my failed business. And they shared similar stories. In that moment, a thought became really clear in my mind: all of my friends were failures.
Being more serious, that night I realized that A: I wasn't the only loser in the world, and B: we all have hidden failures. Please tell me if that is not true. That night was like an exorcism for me. I realized that sharing your failures makes you stronger, not weaker. And being open to my vulnerability helped me connect with others in a deeper and more meaningful way and embrace life lessons I wouldn't have learned previously. As a consequence of this experience of sharing stories of businesses that didn't work, we decided to create a platform of events to help others share their failure stories. And we called it Fuckup Nights.
Years later, we also created a research center devoted to the story of failure and its implications on business, people and society and as we love cool names, we called it the Failure Institute. It has been surprising to see that when an entrepreneur stands on a stage and shares a story of failure, she can actually enjoy that experience. It doesn't have to be a moment of shame and embarrassment, as it used to be in the past. It is an opportunity to share lessons learned and build empathy. We have also discovered that when the members of a team share their failures, magic happens. Bonds grow stronger and collaboration becomes easier.
Through our events and research projects, we have found some interesting facts. For instance, that men and women react in a different way after the failure of a business. The most common reaction among men is to start a new business within one year of failure, but in a different sector, while women decide to look for a job and postpone the creation of a new business. Our hypothesis is that this happens because women tend to suffer more from the impostor syndrome. We feel that we need something else to be a good entrepreneur. But I have seen that in many, many cases women have everything that's needed. We just need to take the step. And in the case of men, it is more common to see that they feel they have enough knowledge and just need to put it in practice in another place with better luck.
Another interesting finding has been that there are regional differences on how entrepreneurs cope with failure. For instance, the most common reaction after the failure of a business in the American continent is to go back to school. While in Europe, the most common reaction is to look for a therapist.
We're not sure which is a better reaction after the failure of a business, but this is something we will study in the future. Another interesting finding has been the profound impact that public policy has on failed entrepreneurs. For instance, in my country, in Mexico, the regulatory environment is so hard, that closing a business can take you a lot of time and a lot of money.
Let's begin with the money. In the best possible scenario, meaning you don't have problems with partners, providers, clients, employees, in the best possible scenario, officially closing a business will cost you 2,000 dollars. Which is a lot of money in Mexico. Someone who earns the minimum wage would have to work for 15 months to save this amount. Now, let's talk about the time. As you may know, in most of the developing world, the average life expectancy of a business is two years. In Mexico, the process of officially closing a business takes two years. What happens when the average life expectancy of a business is so similar to the time it will take you to close it if it doesn't work? Of course, this discourages business creation and promotes informal economy.
In fact, econometric research has proved that if the process of declaring bankruptcy takes less time and less money, more new firms will enter the market. For this reason, in 2017, we proposed a series of public policy recommendations for the procedure of officially closing businesses in Mexico. For a whole year, we worked with entrepreneurs from all over the country and with Congress. And the good news is that we managed to help change the law. Yay!
The idea is that when the new regulation comes into force, entrepreneurs will be able to close their businesses in an online procedure that is faster and inexpensive.
On the night we invented Fuckup Nights, we never imagined that the movement would grow this big. We are in 80 countries now. In that moment, our only intention was to put the topic of failure on the table. To help our friends see that failure is something we must talk about. It is not a cause of humiliation, as it used to be in the past, or a cause of celebration, as some people say. In fact, I want to confess something. Every time I listen to Silicon Valley types or students bragging about failing fast and often like it's no big deal, I cringe. Because I think that there is a dark side on the mantra "fail fast."
Of course, failing fast is a great way to accelerate learning and avoid wasting time. But I fear that when we present rapid failure to entrepreneurs as their one and only option, we might be promoting laziness. We might be promoting that entrepreneurs give up too easily. I also fear that the culture of rapid failure could be minimizing the devastating consequences of the failure of a business. For instance, when my social enterprise died, the worst part was that I had to go back to the indigenous community and tell the women that the business had failed and it was my fault. For some people this could be seen like a great learning opportunity for me, but the truth is that the closure of this business represented much more than that. It meant that the women would stop receiving an income that they really needed.
For this reason, I want to propose something. I want to propose that just as we put aside the idea of publicly humiliating failed entrepreneurs, we must put aside the idea that failing fast is always the best. And I want to propose a new mantra: fail mindfully. We must remember that businesses are made of people, businesses are not entities that appear and disappear magically without consequences. When a firm dies, some people will lose their jobs. And others will lose their money. And in the case of social and green enterprises, the death of this business can have a negative impact on the ecosystems or communities they were trying to serve.
But what does it mean to fail mindfully? It means being aware of the impact, of the consequences of the failure of that business. Being aware of the lessons learned. And being aware of the responsibility to share those learnings with the world.Thank you.
Source:www.ted.com
TED Salon: Brightline Initiative | June 2018
Leticia Gasca:Don´t fail fast-fail mindfully
We celebrate bold entrepreneurs whose ingenuity led them to success, but what happens to those who fail? Far too often, they bury their stories out of shame or humiliation -- and miss out on a valuable opportunity for growth, says author and entrepreneur Leticia Gasca. In this thoughtful talk, Gasca calls for business owners to open up about their failures and makes the case for replacing the idea of "failing fast" with a new mantra: fail mindfully.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Leticia Gasca · Author, entrepreneur
Leticia Gasca is co-founder of the movement Fuckup Nights and Executive Director for the Failure Institute, the first think tank in the world devoted to studying business failure and the reasons behind it.
Transcript:
[This talk contains mature language Viewer discretion is advised]
If we traveled back to the year 800 BC, in Greece, we would see that merchants whose businesses failed were forced to sit in the marketplace with a basket over their heads. In premodern Italy, failed business owners, who had outstanding debts, were taken totally naked to the public square where they had to bang their butts against a special stone while a crowd jeered at them. In the 17th century in France, failed business owners were taken to the center of the market, where the beginning of their bankruptcy was publicly announced. And in order to avoid immediate imprisonment, they had to wear a green bonnet so that everyone knew they were a failure. Of course, these are extreme examples. But it is important to remember that when we excessively punish those who fail, we stifle innovation and business creation, the engines of economic growth in any country.
Time has passed, and today we don't publicly humiliate failed entrepreneurs. And they don't broadcast their failures on social media. In fact, I think that all of us can relate with the pain of failure. But we don't share the details of those experiences. And I totally get it, my friends, I have also been there.
I had a business that failed and sharing that story was incredibly hard. In fact, it required seven years, a good dose of vulnerability and the company of my friends. This is my failure story.
When I was in college, studying business, I met a group of indigenous women. They lived in a poor rural community in the state of Puebla, in central Mexico. They made beautiful handmade products. And when I met them and I saw their work, I decided I wanted to help.
With some friends, I cofounded a social enterprise with the mission to help the women create an income stream and improve their quality of life. We did everything by the book, as we had learned in business school. We got investors, we spent a lot of time building the business and training the women. But soon we realized we were novices. The handmade products were not selling, and the financial plan we had made was totally unrealistic. In fact, we worked for years without a salary, hoping that a miracle would happen, that magically a great buyer would arrive and she would make the business profitable. But that miracle never happened.
In the end, we had to close the business, and that broke my heart. I started everything to create a positive impact on the life of the artisans. And I felt that I have done the opposite. I felt so guilty that I decided to hide this failure from my conversations and my resume for years. I didn't know other failed entrepreneurs, and I thought I was the only loser in the world.
One night, seven years later, I was out with some friends and we were talking about the life of the entrepreneur. And of course, the issue of failure came out. I decided to confess to my friends the story of my failed business. And they shared similar stories. In that moment, a thought became really clear in my mind: all of my friends were failures.
Being more serious, that night I realized that A: I wasn't the only loser in the world, and B: we all have hidden failures. Please tell me if that is not true. That night was like an exorcism for me. I realized that sharing your failures makes you stronger, not weaker. And being open to my vulnerability helped me connect with others in a deeper and more meaningful way and embrace life lessons I wouldn't have learned previously. As a consequence of this experience of sharing stories of businesses that didn't work, we decided to create a platform of events to help others share their failure stories. And we called it Fuckup Nights.
Years later, we also created a research center devoted to the story of failure and its implications on business, people and society and as we love cool names, we called it the Failure Institute. It has been surprising to see that when an entrepreneur stands on a stage and shares a story of failure, she can actually enjoy that experience. It doesn't have to be a moment of shame and embarrassment, as it used to be in the past. It is an opportunity to share lessons learned and build empathy. We have also discovered that when the members of a team share their failures, magic happens. Bonds grow stronger and collaboration becomes easier.
Through our events and research projects, we have found some interesting facts. For instance, that men and women react in a different way after the failure of a business. The most common reaction among men is to start a new business within one year of failure, but in a different sector, while women decide to look for a job and postpone the creation of a new business. Our hypothesis is that this happens because women tend to suffer more from the impostor syndrome. We feel that we need something else to be a good entrepreneur. But I have seen that in many, many cases women have everything that's needed. We just need to take the step. And in the case of men, it is more common to see that they feel they have enough knowledge and just need to put it in practice in another place with better luck.
Another interesting finding has been that there are regional differences on how entrepreneurs cope with failure. For instance, the most common reaction after the failure of a business in the American continent is to go back to school. While in Europe, the most common reaction is to look for a therapist.
We're not sure which is a better reaction after the failure of a business, but this is something we will study in the future. Another interesting finding has been the profound impact that public policy has on failed entrepreneurs. For instance, in my country, in Mexico, the regulatory environment is so hard, that closing a business can take you a lot of time and a lot of money.
Let's begin with the money. In the best possible scenario, meaning you don't have problems with partners, providers, clients, employees, in the best possible scenario, officially closing a business will cost you 2,000 dollars. Which is a lot of money in Mexico. Someone who earns the minimum wage would have to work for 15 months to save this amount. Now, let's talk about the time. As you may know, in most of the developing world, the average life expectancy of a business is two years. In Mexico, the process of officially closing a business takes two years. What happens when the average life expectancy of a business is so similar to the time it will take you to close it if it doesn't work? Of course, this discourages business creation and promotes informal economy.
In fact, econometric research has proved that if the process of declaring bankruptcy takes less time and less money, more new firms will enter the market. For this reason, in 2017, we proposed a series of public policy recommendations for the procedure of officially closing businesses in Mexico. For a whole year, we worked with entrepreneurs from all over the country and with Congress. And the good news is that we managed to help change the law. Yay!
The idea is that when the new regulation comes into force, entrepreneurs will be able to close their businesses in an online procedure that is faster and inexpensive.
On the night we invented Fuckup Nights, we never imagined that the movement would grow this big. We are in 80 countries now. In that moment, our only intention was to put the topic of failure on the table. To help our friends see that failure is something we must talk about. It is not a cause of humiliation, as it used to be in the past, or a cause of celebration, as some people say. In fact, I want to confess something. Every time I listen to Silicon Valley types or students bragging about failing fast and often like it's no big deal, I cringe. Because I think that there is a dark side on the mantra "fail fast."
Of course, failing fast is a great way to accelerate learning and avoid wasting time. But I fear that when we present rapid failure to entrepreneurs as their one and only option, we might be promoting laziness. We might be promoting that entrepreneurs give up too easily. I also fear that the culture of rapid failure could be minimizing the devastating consequences of the failure of a business. For instance, when my social enterprise died, the worst part was that I had to go back to the indigenous community and tell the women that the business had failed and it was my fault. For some people this could be seen like a great learning opportunity for me, but the truth is that the closure of this business represented much more than that. It meant that the women would stop receiving an income that they really needed.
For this reason, I want to propose something. I want to propose that just as we put aside the idea of publicly humiliating failed entrepreneurs, we must put aside the idea that failing fast is always the best. And I want to propose a new mantra: fail mindfully. We must remember that businesses are made of people, businesses are not entities that appear and disappear magically without consequences. When a firm dies, some people will lose their jobs. And others will lose their money. And in the case of social and green enterprises, the death of this business can have a negative impact on the ecosystems or communities they were trying to serve.
But what does it mean to fail mindfully? It means being aware of the impact, of the consequences of the failure of that business. Being aware of the lessons learned. And being aware of the responsibility to share those learnings with the world.Thank you.
Source:www.ted.com
Saturday, August 25, 2018
Las causas de corrupción-Bomberos que se están pisando la manguera, por Jorge Lanata
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Las causas de corrupción
Bomberos que se están pisando la manguera
Las revelaciones de José López inquietan a gobernadores e intendentes en ejercicio.
Jorge Lanata
Acontinuación, transcribo una conversación de trasnoche durante un programa de televisión.
-¡¡¡Establezcan una línea de corte!!!, se exaltó Jorge Asís en el diálogo con Alejandro Fantino. Ambos reproducen, en la noche de América TV, un remedo de los diálogos platónicos pero en estilo mesa de saldos. El Maestro ilumina, el alumno se atora y la verdad sale a la luz.
-Establezcan una línea de corte, dijo el Maestro. Se refiere al desbande producido por las declaraciones de los arrepentidos en el caso de las coimas K.
-¿Vos me decís que arreglen hasta dónde van a llegar?, le preguntó Fantino.
-Sí, querido. Ya estuvo bien, se divirtieron, se sacaron a algunos socios molestos de encima, pero ahora que vean dónde se apaga el ventilador.
Esta apología de la aplicación del derecho penal hecha por Asís es -desde su lógica de parte- correcta. Cuando todos son culpables alguien debe empezar a callarse la boca.
Ambos, alumno y maestro, hablan de la epidemia de arrepentidos, del periodismo patrullero. “Al delator en veinte días no lo respeta ni la amante”, sentencia Asís dedicándoselo al colectivo feminista.
La conversación fluye divertida porque, después de todo, ambos tienen una lejana simpatía por “los que la hicieron”. En realidad, por “los que la hicieron bien”.
El héroe nacional argentino legado por la literatura fue un desertor. La historia de Martin Fierro es el relato de una fuga, un gaucho que escapa del servicio militar y que le recomienda al lector hacerse amigo del juez.
¿La versión política de la omertá será la lealtad, festejada por el peronismo como su valor fundacional?
El consejo de Asís de ponerle un paraguas protector a la tormenta de denuncias coincide con el de gobernadores e intendentes, literalmente muertos de miedo ante las próximas declaraciones de José Bolsos López, el que negociaba con gobernadores e intendentes. La idea de que “ya jugamos un poco al poliladron, es suficiente”, toma fuerza entre los políticos y empresarios ante el temor concreto de que llamen a su puerta.
Durante el debate por los allanamientos a Cristina Fernández de Kirchner esta idea fue expresada del modo más brutal por la senadora kirchnerista por el Chaco, María Inés Pilatti Vergara.
-Las cosas se dan vuelta, amenazó, admonitoria. -¿Ustedes creen que esto no les va a tocar alguna vez? Excavaciones, escaners en los departamentos vecinos...
(…) Ustedes quieren quedar bien con las señoras gordas. Pero tenga presente, señor juez, que no hay escritorio que no gire 180 grados.
Dueña de una sintaxis desagradable que coincidía con su aspecto, la señora Pilatti Vergara largó varios párrafos dignos de la saga de El Padrino.
El argumento “nosotros somos chorros, pero ustedes también”, sigue siendo utilizado por el kirchnerismo que no advierte que, aunque así fuera, los delitos de Cambiemos no los absuelven de las responsabilidades propias.
Se trata de llenar a los demás de barro propio. Al final, todo el barro llegara a confundirse. Bomberos pisándose la manguera.
Fuente:www.clarin.com
Las causas de corrupción
Bomberos que se están pisando la manguera
Las revelaciones de José López inquietan a gobernadores e intendentes en ejercicio.
Jorge Lanata
Acontinuación, transcribo una conversación de trasnoche durante un programa de televisión.
-¡¡¡Establezcan una línea de corte!!!, se exaltó Jorge Asís en el diálogo con Alejandro Fantino. Ambos reproducen, en la noche de América TV, un remedo de los diálogos platónicos pero en estilo mesa de saldos. El Maestro ilumina, el alumno se atora y la verdad sale a la luz.
-Establezcan una línea de corte, dijo el Maestro. Se refiere al desbande producido por las declaraciones de los arrepentidos en el caso de las coimas K.
-¿Vos me decís que arreglen hasta dónde van a llegar?, le preguntó Fantino.
-Sí, querido. Ya estuvo bien, se divirtieron, se sacaron a algunos socios molestos de encima, pero ahora que vean dónde se apaga el ventilador.
Esta apología de la aplicación del derecho penal hecha por Asís es -desde su lógica de parte- correcta. Cuando todos son culpables alguien debe empezar a callarse la boca.
Ambos, alumno y maestro, hablan de la epidemia de arrepentidos, del periodismo patrullero. “Al delator en veinte días no lo respeta ni la amante”, sentencia Asís dedicándoselo al colectivo feminista.
La conversación fluye divertida porque, después de todo, ambos tienen una lejana simpatía por “los que la hicieron”. En realidad, por “los que la hicieron bien”.
El héroe nacional argentino legado por la literatura fue un desertor. La historia de Martin Fierro es el relato de una fuga, un gaucho que escapa del servicio militar y que le recomienda al lector hacerse amigo del juez.
¿La versión política de la omertá será la lealtad, festejada por el peronismo como su valor fundacional?
El consejo de Asís de ponerle un paraguas protector a la tormenta de denuncias coincide con el de gobernadores e intendentes, literalmente muertos de miedo ante las próximas declaraciones de José Bolsos López, el que negociaba con gobernadores e intendentes. La idea de que “ya jugamos un poco al poliladron, es suficiente”, toma fuerza entre los políticos y empresarios ante el temor concreto de que llamen a su puerta.
Durante el debate por los allanamientos a Cristina Fernández de Kirchner esta idea fue expresada del modo más brutal por la senadora kirchnerista por el Chaco, María Inés Pilatti Vergara.
-Las cosas se dan vuelta, amenazó, admonitoria. -¿Ustedes creen que esto no les va a tocar alguna vez? Excavaciones, escaners en los departamentos vecinos...
(…) Ustedes quieren quedar bien con las señoras gordas. Pero tenga presente, señor juez, que no hay escritorio que no gire 180 grados.
Dueña de una sintaxis desagradable que coincidía con su aspecto, la señora Pilatti Vergara largó varios párrafos dignos de la saga de El Padrino.
El argumento “nosotros somos chorros, pero ustedes también”, sigue siendo utilizado por el kirchnerismo que no advierte que, aunque así fuera, los delitos de Cambiemos no los absuelven de las responsabilidades propias.
Se trata de llenar a los demás de barro propio. Al final, todo el barro llegara a confundirse. Bomberos pisándose la manguera.
Fuente:www.clarin.com
Opinión-Humor Político-La búsqueda del tesoro, por Alejandro Borensztein
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Humor Político
La búsqueda del tesoro
¿Será éste un momento histórico para el país, para sacarnos de encima a todos lo que lo arruinaron?
Alejandro Borensztein
Cuando el portero del edificio de la calle Juncal donde vive Cristina se enteró de que el gobierno ofrece a quienes aporten datos concretos sobre el dinero y los bienes choreados una recompensa del 5% sobre el monto recuperado, lo primero que hizo fue llamar a California y señar una casa en Malibú, frente al mar.
Después se sirvió un whisky, se tiró en el sillón, se prendió un faso y llamó al Juez Bonadio.
Lo mismo soñamos hacer millones de argentinos. Más allá de putear una y otra vez contra el licuado de inútiles y malandras que nos gobernó, y de entretenernos con los choferes, los arrepentidos, los que se quiebran y demás, ahora la nueva locura es encontrar algo del tesoro y quedarse con un pedacito.
El gobierno sacó una resolución para incentivar el recupero de lo choreado. El procedimiento es muy simple. El afortunado que encuentre un par de millones de dólares, por ejemplo en el taparrollo de la casa un ex secretario de estado kirchnerista, deberá comunicarse al Ministerio de Seguridad llamando a un número telefónico de acceso rápido: el 134.
Una vez constatada la veracidad de la denuncia, el cazafortunas deberá empezar con los trámites y seguramente en dos o tres años recibirá el cheque por el 5%. Si para patentar un ciclomotor tenés que hacer un trámite de novela, imaginate el quilombo que va a ser cobrar un cheque del Estado por haber recuperado guita choreada por un Kirchner.
De última contratás un gestor, vas aceitando a los funcionarios que se te cruzan en el camino y a la larga vas a cobrar tu recompensa por ayudar a encontrar la guita de las coimas.
En principio, esto movilizó a miles de personas por todo el país en busca del tesoro perdido. Muchos viajan al sur a recorrer campos, alquilan tractores, excavadoras, contratan cuadrillas de obreros, compran carpas, camperas, bolsas de dormir, etc. Otros salen a la noche por las ciudades a revisar departamentos, autos, garages. La gente se traslada, viaja, compra sogas para trepar por los edificios, arneses, linternas para meterse en los departamentos, dardos con cloroformo para dormir perros, herramientas para abrir cajas de seguridad. En fin, como medida para reactivar un poco la economía no está mal.
Sin embargo, la cosa no da para entusiasmarse demasiado porque este gobierno es tan miserable que le puso un tope de 2 millones de pesos a la recompensa. Así es muy difícil que funcione.
Supongamos que usted tiene la data posta del lugar donde Julio De Vido guarda el canuto. ¿Se va a arriesgar a meterse de noche en la chacra de los De Vido a revisar el galpón donde duermen los pájaros que coleccionaba el ex ministro, por dos palitos pesos de morondanga? Hoy son unos 65.000 dólares. Apenas te alcanza para comprarte el BMW que tenía Aníbal Fernández y que le robaron en Gerli, en un hecho de sensación de inseguridad ocurrido durante la época en que los kirchneristas todavía vendían que eran progresistas y honestos. Despúes aparecieron Milani, José López y ya no la pudieron dibujar más.
La realidad es que el tope de 2 millones de pesos significa una recompensa del 5% sobre 40 palos. Un vuelto. Nada.
Pensemos que Cristóbal López, él solito, se choreó 10.000 palos del impuesto a los combustibles no liquidados al Estado. Y además es guita fácil de encontrar ¿Donde está? En todos lados. Prendé la tele, poné C5N y ahí ya tenés 500 o 600 palos por abajo de las patas. A eso le tenés que sumar todo lo que le chorearon a los trabajadores del Sindicato de Televisión. Una fortuna. Llamá al 134, deciles que haciendo zapping te encontraste con una parte del botín de López y De Sousa y algo te tienen que dar.
Podés hacer una más fácil aún. Llamás al 134 y decís que Aldo Roggio tiene guita escondida en el placarcito del dormitorio. No te vas a equivocar.
Después, si esa guita es la que sobró de un bolso que mandó a la Casa Rosada hace tres años o es la que tiene guardada para llevarse la semana que viene cuando se vaya a tomar sol a Saint-Tropez, es un tema que él deberá explicarle a Bonadio. No es asunto tuyo. Los billetes de la corrupción y los de la dolce far niente son todos iguales. Y los encontraste vos. Te corresponde el 5%.
A todo esto, y abrumada por la situación, Cristina salió a desmentir las denuncias y dijo que lo del chofer que la vio en pijama no es cierto. En esa estoy con Ella. Imaginemos la escena. Centeno entra a Olivos cargando un bolso con diez palos verdes. De repente se le cruza Cristina en camisón y mientras ella se acerca a saludarlo, por atrás se aparece Néstor de traje cruzado y mocasines. ¿Cómo le explica? ¿Qué le dice? “Hola, yo soy el del bolso, nomás”. Situación Imposible.
También le creo a ExElla cuando niega haber cobrado una coima de 600 lucas verdes para firmar el decreto que extendía la concesión de la hidrovía, tal como confesó el empresario arrepentido Gabriel Romero. No dan los números. No prorrogás un negocio de cientos de millones de dólares con una cometita de 600 lucas. No es digno de un gobierno corrupto como Dios manda.
En este caso, sospecho que los dos tienen razón. El tipo efectivamente pagó y Ella seguramente jamás cobró. En el revoleo de los bolsos, la mejicaneada de pequeños vivillos debe haber sido una constante de la década ganada.
Para el núcleo duro kirchnerista, los cuadernos son unas fotocopias truchas que no sirven para nada cuando acusan a Cristina y son una prueba irrefutable cuando involucran a Calcaterra. Así de ciegos están estos muchachos.
Refutan diciendo que todo esto es para tapar la crisis, que el pueblo se va a levantar contra los antipatrias, que va a correr sangre (de verdad lo dicen y lo escriben), que los verdaderos corruptos son los de este gobierno y te ponen como ejemplo el caso del intendente de Villa Río Bermejito en el Chaco, de Cambiemos, al que le encontraron 2 millones de pesos escondidos arriba del cielorraso y otro millón repartido en el resto de la casa.
Lo curioso del caso es que el tipo ganó las elecciones como radical en 2003 (ahí era un chorro), después ganó en 2007 con la boleta de Capitanich (ahí ya empezaba a ser honesto), luego fue nuevamente reelecto en 2011 en la boleta kirchnerista (ahí fue un ejemplo de la causa nacional y popular) y finalmente en 2015 se subió a Cambiemos y volvió a ganar como un chorro de esta oligarquía que está entregando el país.
Si este ñato que gobernaba una localidad de 3.800 habitantes tenía esa guita encanutada, no quiero ni pensar la que debe haber en la casa de más de un intendente del conurbano bonaerense.
¿Será este un momento histórico para el país? ¿Lograremos sacarnos de encima a todos los que lo arruinaron?
Ojo. Hoy es fundamental reivindicar a los políticos honestos y a la política en general como única manera de organizar una sociedad. No sea cosa que en la confusión terminemos votando al Chiqui Tapia. O a Tinelli.
Párrafo aparte para los empresarios argentinos. En 2013 Moreno llamó a los dueños y ejecutivos de supermercados y cadenas de electrodomésticos y les ordenó no publicar avisos en Clarín y La Nación. Y los tipos… ¡¡¡obedecieron!!!
A la luz de los hechos, muchos de nuestros empresarios, antes que corruptos fueron patéticamente cobardes. En un país que alguna vez fue gobernado por Videla y Massera, a que le tenían miedo? ¿A Moreno???!! ¿De verdad?
El viernes fue 17 agosto y se conmemoró la muerte del General San Martin. Sin embargo el feriado se pasó para mañana. Por más que le dé vueltas al asunto, no termino de entender porqué para que sea fin de semana largo, un feriado que cae viernes hay que pasarlo al lunes. Aunque sea esta simple pavada, alguna vez alguien debería explicar algo en este bendito país.
Por suerte el cruce de los Andes y la liberación de Chile y Perú no estuvo a cargo ni de estos empresarios ni de estos kirchneristas. Seguiríamos siendo una colonia española.
Fuente:www.clarin.com
Humor Político
La búsqueda del tesoro
¿Será éste un momento histórico para el país, para sacarnos de encima a todos lo que lo arruinaron?
Alejandro Borensztein
Cuando el portero del edificio de la calle Juncal donde vive Cristina se enteró de que el gobierno ofrece a quienes aporten datos concretos sobre el dinero y los bienes choreados una recompensa del 5% sobre el monto recuperado, lo primero que hizo fue llamar a California y señar una casa en Malibú, frente al mar.
Después se sirvió un whisky, se tiró en el sillón, se prendió un faso y llamó al Juez Bonadio.
Lo mismo soñamos hacer millones de argentinos. Más allá de putear una y otra vez contra el licuado de inútiles y malandras que nos gobernó, y de entretenernos con los choferes, los arrepentidos, los que se quiebran y demás, ahora la nueva locura es encontrar algo del tesoro y quedarse con un pedacito.
El gobierno sacó una resolución para incentivar el recupero de lo choreado. El procedimiento es muy simple. El afortunado que encuentre un par de millones de dólares, por ejemplo en el taparrollo de la casa un ex secretario de estado kirchnerista, deberá comunicarse al Ministerio de Seguridad llamando a un número telefónico de acceso rápido: el 134.
Una vez constatada la veracidad de la denuncia, el cazafortunas deberá empezar con los trámites y seguramente en dos o tres años recibirá el cheque por el 5%. Si para patentar un ciclomotor tenés que hacer un trámite de novela, imaginate el quilombo que va a ser cobrar un cheque del Estado por haber recuperado guita choreada por un Kirchner.
De última contratás un gestor, vas aceitando a los funcionarios que se te cruzan en el camino y a la larga vas a cobrar tu recompensa por ayudar a encontrar la guita de las coimas.
En principio, esto movilizó a miles de personas por todo el país en busca del tesoro perdido. Muchos viajan al sur a recorrer campos, alquilan tractores, excavadoras, contratan cuadrillas de obreros, compran carpas, camperas, bolsas de dormir, etc. Otros salen a la noche por las ciudades a revisar departamentos, autos, garages. La gente se traslada, viaja, compra sogas para trepar por los edificios, arneses, linternas para meterse en los departamentos, dardos con cloroformo para dormir perros, herramientas para abrir cajas de seguridad. En fin, como medida para reactivar un poco la economía no está mal.
Sin embargo, la cosa no da para entusiasmarse demasiado porque este gobierno es tan miserable que le puso un tope de 2 millones de pesos a la recompensa. Así es muy difícil que funcione.
Supongamos que usted tiene la data posta del lugar donde Julio De Vido guarda el canuto. ¿Se va a arriesgar a meterse de noche en la chacra de los De Vido a revisar el galpón donde duermen los pájaros que coleccionaba el ex ministro, por dos palitos pesos de morondanga? Hoy son unos 65.000 dólares. Apenas te alcanza para comprarte el BMW que tenía Aníbal Fernández y que le robaron en Gerli, en un hecho de sensación de inseguridad ocurrido durante la época en que los kirchneristas todavía vendían que eran progresistas y honestos. Despúes aparecieron Milani, José López y ya no la pudieron dibujar más.
La realidad es que el tope de 2 millones de pesos significa una recompensa del 5% sobre 40 palos. Un vuelto. Nada.
Pensemos que Cristóbal López, él solito, se choreó 10.000 palos del impuesto a los combustibles no liquidados al Estado. Y además es guita fácil de encontrar ¿Donde está? En todos lados. Prendé la tele, poné C5N y ahí ya tenés 500 o 600 palos por abajo de las patas. A eso le tenés que sumar todo lo que le chorearon a los trabajadores del Sindicato de Televisión. Una fortuna. Llamá al 134, deciles que haciendo zapping te encontraste con una parte del botín de López y De Sousa y algo te tienen que dar.
Podés hacer una más fácil aún. Llamás al 134 y decís que Aldo Roggio tiene guita escondida en el placarcito del dormitorio. No te vas a equivocar.
Después, si esa guita es la que sobró de un bolso que mandó a la Casa Rosada hace tres años o es la que tiene guardada para llevarse la semana que viene cuando se vaya a tomar sol a Saint-Tropez, es un tema que él deberá explicarle a Bonadio. No es asunto tuyo. Los billetes de la corrupción y los de la dolce far niente son todos iguales. Y los encontraste vos. Te corresponde el 5%.
A todo esto, y abrumada por la situación, Cristina salió a desmentir las denuncias y dijo que lo del chofer que la vio en pijama no es cierto. En esa estoy con Ella. Imaginemos la escena. Centeno entra a Olivos cargando un bolso con diez palos verdes. De repente se le cruza Cristina en camisón y mientras ella se acerca a saludarlo, por atrás se aparece Néstor de traje cruzado y mocasines. ¿Cómo le explica? ¿Qué le dice? “Hola, yo soy el del bolso, nomás”. Situación Imposible.
También le creo a ExElla cuando niega haber cobrado una coima de 600 lucas verdes para firmar el decreto que extendía la concesión de la hidrovía, tal como confesó el empresario arrepentido Gabriel Romero. No dan los números. No prorrogás un negocio de cientos de millones de dólares con una cometita de 600 lucas. No es digno de un gobierno corrupto como Dios manda.
En este caso, sospecho que los dos tienen razón. El tipo efectivamente pagó y Ella seguramente jamás cobró. En el revoleo de los bolsos, la mejicaneada de pequeños vivillos debe haber sido una constante de la década ganada.
Para el núcleo duro kirchnerista, los cuadernos son unas fotocopias truchas que no sirven para nada cuando acusan a Cristina y son una prueba irrefutable cuando involucran a Calcaterra. Así de ciegos están estos muchachos.
Refutan diciendo que todo esto es para tapar la crisis, que el pueblo se va a levantar contra los antipatrias, que va a correr sangre (de verdad lo dicen y lo escriben), que los verdaderos corruptos son los de este gobierno y te ponen como ejemplo el caso del intendente de Villa Río Bermejito en el Chaco, de Cambiemos, al que le encontraron 2 millones de pesos escondidos arriba del cielorraso y otro millón repartido en el resto de la casa.
Lo curioso del caso es que el tipo ganó las elecciones como radical en 2003 (ahí era un chorro), después ganó en 2007 con la boleta de Capitanich (ahí ya empezaba a ser honesto), luego fue nuevamente reelecto en 2011 en la boleta kirchnerista (ahí fue un ejemplo de la causa nacional y popular) y finalmente en 2015 se subió a Cambiemos y volvió a ganar como un chorro de esta oligarquía que está entregando el país.
Si este ñato que gobernaba una localidad de 3.800 habitantes tenía esa guita encanutada, no quiero ni pensar la que debe haber en la casa de más de un intendente del conurbano bonaerense.
¿Será este un momento histórico para el país? ¿Lograremos sacarnos de encima a todos los que lo arruinaron?
Ojo. Hoy es fundamental reivindicar a los políticos honestos y a la política en general como única manera de organizar una sociedad. No sea cosa que en la confusión terminemos votando al Chiqui Tapia. O a Tinelli.
Párrafo aparte para los empresarios argentinos. En 2013 Moreno llamó a los dueños y ejecutivos de supermercados y cadenas de electrodomésticos y les ordenó no publicar avisos en Clarín y La Nación. Y los tipos… ¡¡¡obedecieron!!!
A la luz de los hechos, muchos de nuestros empresarios, antes que corruptos fueron patéticamente cobardes. En un país que alguna vez fue gobernado por Videla y Massera, a que le tenían miedo? ¿A Moreno???!! ¿De verdad?
El viernes fue 17 agosto y se conmemoró la muerte del General San Martin. Sin embargo el feriado se pasó para mañana. Por más que le dé vueltas al asunto, no termino de entender porqué para que sea fin de semana largo, un feriado que cae viernes hay que pasarlo al lunes. Aunque sea esta simple pavada, alguna vez alguien debería explicar algo en este bendito país.
Por suerte el cruce de los Andes y la liberación de Chile y Perú no estuvo a cargo ni de estos empresarios ni de estos kirchneristas. Seguiríamos siendo una colonia española.
Fuente:www.clarin.com
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