Carlos Fernando Flores Labra (born January 9, 1943) is a

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...

an engineer, entrepreneur and politician. He is a former cabinet minister of president

Salvador Allende Salvador Guillermo Allende Gossens (, , ; 26 June 1908 – 11 September 1973) was a Chilean physician and socialist politician who served as the 28th president of Chile from 3 November 1970 until his death on 11 September 1973. He was the fir ...

and was senator for the Arica and Parinacota and

Tarapacá San Lorenzo de Tarapacá, also known simply as Tarapacá, is a town in the region of the same name in Chile. History The town has likely been inhabited since the 12th century, when it formed part of the Inca trail. When Spanish explorer Diego d ...

regions between 2001 and 2009. On March 31, 2010, he was designated President of Chile's National Innovation Council for Competitiveness by President

Sebastián Piñera Miguel Juan Sebastián Piñera Echenique OMCh (; born 1 December 1949) is a Chilean billionaire businessman and politician who served as president of Chile from 2010 to 2014 and again from 2018 to 2022. The son of a Christian Democratic polit ...

Biography

Flores was born in

Talca Talca () is a List of cities in Chile, city and Communes of Chile, commune in Chile located about south of Santiago, Chile, Santiago, and is the capital of both Talca Province and Maule Region (7th Region of Chile). As of the 2012 census, the ...

. He became finance minister in the government of Chilean president

and then spent three years as a

political prisoner A political prisoner is someone imprisoned for their political activity. The political offense is not always the official reason for the prisoner's detention. There is no internationally recognized legal definition of the concept, although n ...

(from September 11, 1973 to 1976) after the military coup of General

Augusto Pinochet Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte (, , , ; 25 November 1915 – 10 December 2006) was a Chilean general who ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990, first as the leader of the Military Junta of Chile from 1973 to 1981, being declared President of ...

. Subsequently, forced into exile, after negotiations on his behalf by

Amnesty International Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says it has more than ten million members and sup ...

, he moved with his family to

Palo Alto Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. The city was estab ...

, California, and worked as a researcher in the Computer Science department at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

. He subsequently obtained his PhD at

UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of Californi ...

under the guidance of

Hubert Dreyfus Hubert Lederer Dreyfus (; October 15, 1929 – April 22, 2017) was an American philosopher and professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. His main interests included phenomenology, existentialism and the philosophy of both ...

Stuart Dreyfus A native of Terre Haute, Indiana, Stuart E. Dreyfus is professor emeritus at University of California, Berkeley in the Industrial Engineering and Operations Research Department. While at the Rand Corporation he was a programmer of the JOHNNIAC com ...

John Searle John Rogers Searle (; born July 31, 1932) is an American philosopher widely noted for contributions to the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and social philosophy. He began teaching at UC Berkeley in 1959, and was Willis S. and Mario ...

and Ann Markussen. There he developed his work on philosophy, coaching and

workflow A workflow consists of an orchestrated and repeatable pattern of activity, enabled by the systematic organization of resources into processes that transform materials, provide services, or process information. It can be depicted as a sequence of ...

technology, influenced by

Martin Heidegger Martin Heidegger (; ; 26 September 188926 May 1976) was a German philosopher who is best known for contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. He is among the most important and influential philosophers of the 20th centur ...

Humberto Maturana Humberto Maturana Romesín (September 14, 1928 – May 6, 2021) was a Chilean biologist and philosopher. Many consider him a member of a group of second-order cybernetics theoreticians such as Heinz von Foerster, Gordon Pask, Herbert Brün a ...

John Austin John Austin may refer to: Arts and entertainment * John P. Austin (1906–1997), American set decorator *Johnny Austin (1910–1983), American musician * John Austin (author) (fl. 1940s), British novelist Military *John Austin (soldier) (1801� ...

and others. His thesis was titled ''Management and Communication in the Office of the Future.''

Projects and companies founded

Flores has founded several companies including "Hermenet" (in partnership with

Werner Erhard Werner Hans Erhard (born John Paul Rosenberg; September 5, 1935) is an American author and lecturer known for founding est, which operated from 1971 to 1984. He has written, lectured, and taught on self-improvement. In 1977 Erhard, with the su ...

); "Logonet", a design, logistics, and manufacturing company; "Business Design Associates", a management consulting company) an
Action Technologies
a software company, where he introduced new distinctions in

analysis, groupware, software design and business process analysis that he developed in association with

Terry Winograd Terry Allen Winograd (born February 24, 1946) is an American professor of computer science at Stanford University, and co-director of the Stanford Human–Computer Interaction Group. He is known within the philosophy of mind and artificial intell ...

. He has also founded an Internet-based movement called
Atina Chile
'. His newest project i
Pluralistic Networks
a company that plans to develop leadership and communication abilities in virtual business teams using multi-player online games, currently

World of Warcraft ''World of Warcraft'' (''WoW'') is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) released in 2004 by Blizzard Entertainment. Set in the ''Warcraft'' fantasy universe, ''World of Warcraft'' takes place within the world of Azeroth ...

Politics

Flores was

Finance Minister A finance minister is an executive or cabinet position in charge of one or more of government finances, economic policy and financial regulation. A finance minister's portfolio has a large variety of names around the world, such as "treasury", " ...

of president

in the early 1970s and later the Secretary General of the Government and, during the Coup, he was alongside the President in

La Moneda Palace Palacio de La Moneda (, ''Palace of the Mint''), or simply La Moneda, is the seat of the President of the Republic of Chile. It also houses the offices of three cabinet ministers: Interior, General Secretariat of the Presidency and General Secret ...

. After the coup d'état he was imprisoned, subjected to prolonged, systematic psychological torture and later driven to exile by the military regime of

. In 2001 Flores was elected senator for the

Tarapacá Region The Tarapacá Region ( es, Región de Tarapacá, ) is one of Chile's 16 first-order administrative divisions. It comprises two provinces, Iquique and Tamarugal. It borders the Chilean Arica and Parinacota Region to the north, Bolivia's Oruro D ...

, as a member of the center-left Party for Democracy (PPD), a constituent party of the governing coalition ''

Concertación The Concertación, officially the Concertación de Partidos por la Democracia ( en, Coalition of Parties for Democracy), was a coalition of center-left political parties in Chile, founded in 1988. Presidential candidates under its banner won ...

''. In late 2004 Flores was unsuccessful in becoming the PPD's candidate for

President of Chile The president of Chile ( es, Presidente de Chile), officially known as the President of the Republic of Chile ( es, Presidente de la República de Chile), is the head of state and head of government of the Republic of Chile. The president is re ...

and he later supported the candidacy of

Michelle Bachelet Verónica Michelle Bachelet Jeria (; born 29 September 1951) is a Chilean politician who served as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2018 to 2022. She previously served as President of Chile from 2006 to 2010 and 2014 to 201 ...

. In 2006 Flores ran for the presidency of the PPD party, but lost to Sergio Bitar. Later that year, with the possibility of being a presidential candidate slipping away, he began to move away from his center-left party. On January 8, 2007, he inaugurated a new political project called

ChileFirst The Liberal Party of Chile ( es, Partido Liberal de Chile) is a social-liberal political party in Chile, founded 26 January 2013 in Santiago, Chile. The main figure of the party is the deputy Vlado Mirosevic. Ideology The Liberal Party of C ...

. The next day he submitted his resignation to the PPD. He is currently an independent Senator who caucuses with the center-right

Alliance for Chile The Alliance ( es, Alianza), previously known as Alliance for Chile ( es, Alianza por Chile), was a coalition of centre-right to right-wing Chilean political parties. The Alliance was replaced between 2009 and 2012 by the Coalition for Change. A ...

(a coalition of 2 right wing parties). He drew sharp criticism from his former political allies for supporting

's presidential candidacy. He did not seek re-election in December 2009 and ChileFirst won no seats in Congress in the election. Until March 2010 he remained as an independent senator. On March 31, 2010 he was designated President of Chile's National Innovation Council for Competitiveness by President Piñera.

Publications

* ''Building Trust: In Business, Politics, Relationships, and Life'', (author) * ''Understanding Computers and Cognition : A New Foundation for Design'' (with

), (co-author) * ''Disclosing New Worlds: Entrepreneurship, Democratic Action, and the Cultivation of Solidarity'', (co-author, with Charles Spinosa and

) *''Conversations For Action and Collected Essays: Instilling a Culture of Commitment in Working Relationships'' * ''Beyond Calculation: The Next Fifty Years'', a special issue of the

Communications of the ACM ''Communications of the ACM'' is the monthly journal of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). It was established in 1958, with Saul Rosen as its first managing editor. It is sent to all ACM members. Articles are intended for readers with ...

journal, (contributor)

References

External links

Fast Company article on Flores — "The Power of Words"Center for Quality of Management Journal article — "Using the Methods of Fernando Flores"Stanford University article on Flores
{{DEFAULTSORT:Flores, Fernando 1943 births Living people Chilean Ministers of Economy Members of the Senate of Chile Communication theorists Members of the MAPU Obrero Campesino Party for Democracy (Chile) politicians People from Talca Candidates for President of Chile Chilean exiles