ECOLOGY OF LEARNING.

Personal innovation for a Master of innovation.

Awareness is gradually emerging from the paradigm shift currently underway. This transformation sheds light the competencies that are needed now to navigate the demands of new contexts, particularly the need for flexibility, the ability to let go of established “truths,” and the need for the cultivation of trust in embodied sensing over explanatory reasoning. Consciously re-inhabiting the body is now becoming both a tool for transformation and a place for creativity to respond to contemporary challenges.

The Master’s in Innovation at Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez (Chile) is designed to educate professionals capable of leading innovation teams that develop new products, processes, and services for a more sustainable future. As articulated by its Director, José Opazo, graduates master innovation tools and methodologies, manage transformation processes with critical reflection on organizational and societal needs, and address complex challenges through creativity, empathy, and systems thinking.

An early milestone in the program is the Personal Innovation course, conceived to serve not merely as a pedagogical strategy but as an act of epistemic coherence: transformation of the external world presupposes engagement with the internal landscape from which innovation arises. The contemporary academic culture tends to privilege knowledge accumulation and correct answers; yet such saturation restricts receptivity to novelty. The course reopens the question: how can life be acknowledged as an ongoing act of change and creation?

The module integrates three interrelated domains — mind, body, and form — designed to facilitate self-knowledge and perceptual expansion. In the psychological component, (the mind domine) led by Roberto Paredes, students examine cognitive, emotional, and mental patterns that condition creative capacity. These internal “maps,” often operating unconsciously, can restrict access to innovative potential. The inquiry, therefore focuses on identifying explanatory frameworks regarding the self and environment that impede creativity.

The embodied dimension, (the body domain) facilitated by Viviana Galdames, situates the body as a field of perception and transformation. Students engage with Social Presencing Theater (SPT), a methodology that provides access to subtle, preverbal forms of individual and collective knowing. In this approach, the body functions not as a passive object but as an active agent of perception and systemic awareness. As Hayashi (2016) notes, “the body possesses an intrinsic wisdom that allows systemic dynamics to be revealed when it is given space to express itself without judgment.” Practices such as the 20-Minute Dance cultivate individual trust, reconnection with the Earth-body, and a renewed sense of belonging, independent of competition. Systemic constellations in open space further develop capacities for self-observation, presence, and deep listening — competencies essential for genuine innovation. Scharmer (2018) emphasizes that “the ability to hold the space of the unknown requires cultivating an open presence, an attention that listens from the emerging future.” Integrating the body into learning processes also enables engagement with resistances inaccessible to purely intellectual approaches, thus opening new possibilities for action, decision-making, and creation.

Among the most impactful practices is the Field Dance, wherein participants sequentially step into an empty space, allowing collective silence to give rise to gesture or movement. This exercise demonstrates the human capacity to co-create systems either grounded in respect and care or, alternatively, in fear, irony, or dismissal. A question emerging from this practice illustrates its pedagogical depth: What if, each time we stood before others in educational spaces, we regarded them with love and respect? What would change if all actors — students, faculty, administrators — inhabited learning environments with the stance: I am here to support you in becoming your best possible self?

The artistic dimension, (the form domain) led by José León, confronts students with the blank canvas as an invitation to make visible the invisible, embrace risk, “fail with beauty,” and allow novelty to emerge in uncertainty.

Taken together, the psychological, the embodied, and the artistic components form an ecology of learning oriented toward authentic innovation. This form of innovation cannot be reduced to technical manuals or procedural instruction; rather, it emerges from the intimate dialogue between personal identity and the evolving needs of the world.