Entrepreneurship and inequality in Latin America: social entrepreneurship for the generation of networking and absorptive capabilities

Abstract

This paper intends to contribute to the current debate about the need of social and productive technological change in LDCs. In particular, we analyse micro-enterprises and SMEs' role in the tecno-economic paradigm change. Although commonly associated to either traditional and retardant forces, the point we wish to make is that the vast majority of the latent and emergent entrepreneurial force (i.e. micro-enterprises and SMEs) in LDCs, at present largely disconnected from the national and transnational economic circuit, represent a huge potential for the techno-economic paradigm change. By analogy, these latent forces represent what Albert Einstein taught us about whereby a single brick can be made to release a huge amount of energy in the form of an atomic explosion (De Soto 2000). Latent entrepreneurship is comparable to the potential nuclear energy in Einstein's brick, however, as should be clear by the end of the paper, our examination departs from that of the De Soto´s in some important aspects.