Innovation and Entrepreneurship: The Latin American Thought

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to analyze, from the Latin American thought approach (LTA), the ideas that were produced after World War II on innovation and entrepreneurship in Latin America. It should be mentioned, from now on, that in this approach the topics, phenomena, or problems are always contextualized within a broader problem to be solved, namely that of development. To this end, two axes of analysis are addressed from which the analytical bases, approaches, key concepts, and public policy proposals are located. The first axis explores the proposals related to the development and the idea of the center-periphery model. The second analyzes the role of innovation and entrepreneurship based on the industrialization model, to identify the problems or inadequacies of Latin American entrepreneurship. The proposal emphasizes the need to contextualize entrepreneurship in the broad dimension of development. In this journey, it will be observed that the role of the entrepreneur has been of relevance for the import substitution industrialization (ISI) model in its beginnings by assigning her/him the task of supplying the domestic market by substituting imports, to reduce degrees of dependence in an asymmetric economic world; in the maturity stage of the model, the need for entrepreneurship was affirmed by incorporating innovation. Briefly, we will see that when the model changed, mainly in the 1980s, the firm would assume the role of a resource center for technological accumulation to achieve competitiveness and significantly insert itself in the export market. From Latin America's history in search for development, we can conclude that innovative business entrepreneurship has been less successful and less effective than Latin America requires.

Citation

Jasso, J., Núñez, I. and Torres, A. (2022), "Innovation and Entrepreneurship: The Latin American Thought", Montiel Méndez, O.J. and Alvarado, A.A. (Ed.) The Emerald Handbook of Entrepreneurship in Latin America, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 111-132. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80071-955-220221009