Innovation and Entrepreneurship: A New Mindset for Emerging Markets

Foresight is a framework that can be used by organizations as a tool to elaborate a possible vision or visions of the future. Identifying ways to reach the future vision that is more attractive, this framework has been created from the experience and best practices of a group of professional futurologists and is used in all kinds of organizations in the public or private sectors linked in an intrinsic way to the strategic planning process, based on the constant collection of information, the creation of scenarios, and the definition of medium- to long-term visions. It is due to this complexity in their execution that the practice of foresight has generally occurred in organizations of a certain size and is not widespread among entrepreneurs, individuals, or in small teams. To address this area of opportunity the author has structured an agile and compact version of the framework, with the simplified objective of providing its users with a degree of sensitivity toward a reduced set of future options and the author has called it Lean Foresight.

The goal of this work is to include the new economic-based approaches related to entrepreneurship that have been published in the literature. Based on the neoclassical and Austrian schools, some sociological, psychological and economic theories about entrepreneurship. In this work, some unknown economic-based approaches related to entrepreneurship will be summarized, as they are included in the work of Saiz-Alvarez and García-Vaquero (2017). These approaches are: (1) The Jack-of-all-trades Theory, (2) The Mezzanine Theory, (3) The O-Ring Theory, (4) The Theory of Resources and Capabilities, (5) Entrepreneurial Bricolage, (6) The Processes’ School, (7) The Feedback Loop Theory, (8) The Theory of Effectuation, and (9) The Theory of the Optimal Triangle. All these theories will be summarized in this chapter.

It is well known that entrepreneurship is a complex phenomenon, which takes place under great uncertainty. Much of the existing research that explores the venture creation process has assumed a linear, unitary process. The proposal presented in this chapter involves the venture creation process viewed as an iterative, non-linear, feedback-driven system called the Startup Path – a framework that brings together the entrepreneur as an individual, with its journey on the venture creation process.

First things first: being an entrepreneur is not all glory, flexible hours, and being the owner of your own time. As a matter of fact, it is quite the opposite, at least in the early years. The stories we read about successful entrepreneurs are quite compelling and cause an urge and desire in people to pursue that kind of life. What is often left out of those great stories and news are all the businesses that have failed along the way. The odds of being one of those renowned entrepreneurs are extremely low. This is not to dissuade people of starting his or her own business, but for them to be aware of the reality and challenges of starting a new business. This chapter will focus on the different types of entrepreneurship.

Social entrepreneurship (SE) has become the engine propelling the rapid expansion of the social/environmental sector; thus, the authors need to examine it from different perspectives. First of all, it is vital to understand the concept of SE in an attempt to understand the most basic question: what makes an entrepreneurship social and what makes a social initiative a SE? Second, it is important to know the tools to develop a SE such as the business model canvas and design thinking, among others, which are adapted to SE, as well as tools that are unique to the sector such as impact measurement and impact investing. Third, aspiring SEs have to understand the current ecosystem in order to take advantage of the enormous support that the SE ecosystem has to offer thanks to global players such as Ashoka, the Schwab, and Skoll foundations as well as prominent Latin American players such as New Ventures Group, ANDE, and collective company-driven initiatives such as Momentum led by BBVA Bank that have supported more than 10,000 SE all over the world. Finally, the authors will introduce the case of low-income house builders Hábtiva and a student challenge to ignite aspiring social entrepreneurs. This chapter provides a glimpse of the field SE by focusing in its importance in our current challenging world, its definition, some tools used in the field, the current ecosystem of SE, how to measure social impact, and some cases and challenges.

The chapter covers a landscape and roadmap for business innovation, based on the consideration that the only measure of innovation is the value it creates. The challenge is to generate sustainable value today when value is a moving target and an expanding choice space for customers and providers. Additionally, the chapter will document one case and one challenge.

Three main findings in the chapter are: (1) value is on the eye of the customer; (2) invention is not innovation; it is a discovery as a result of creative processes that is often serendipitous and very difficult to predict or plan; and (3) innovation is to deliver and create value for a costumer through the commercialization and monetization of an offering.

The chapter covers a framework to design innovative business models to articulate a sustainable value narrative with a customer-centric approach, and it describes the rationale of how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value. Every organization has a business model, even if the word “business” is not used as a descriptor. Additionally, the chapter will documents a case and presents a challenge.

To develop the framework, the chapter followed a customer-centric approach in order to build a sustainable business model and create economic, social, and environmental value.

For an organization to be competitive, it needs to constantly innovate. For this to happen, you need the right combination of leaders, talented people, organizational characteristics, and culture. In the chapter, the authors included different perspectives of leadership and models of organizational culture. Both are relevant topics in the field of organizational behavior related to innovation as well as organizational effectiveness.

The chapter covers the legal landscape and roadmap of legal aspects for venture capital (VC) investments and financing.

Mexico’s VC industry is composed by 63 Mexico-based fund managers plus another 50 foreign firms that have done at least one transaction on the past four years. In sum, they have committed over $1.64 billion USD to be invested in the venture space, distributed over a diverse pool of VC stages and industries. As many of 46 funds are focused on seed capital, leaving the rest for later stages.

Regarding deal activity, AMEXCAP has record of 782 VC transactions for a total of $834 million USD invested from 2010 to September 2017. The industry saw its best year in its history in 2016 with the largest number of transactions with 182, representing $209 million USD of capital invested. Of these, 55% of all deals were in the seed stage, 40% in series A and B, and 5% were in later stages.

The chapter provides a practical guide to identify and define different funding sources for entrepreneurial and innovation endeavors, including a methodology to describe return on investment expectations from funding sources. Also, the authors provide recommended key performance indicators and valuation methods when pitching to potential investors.

This chapter describes the basic elements of an ecosystem of innovation entrepreneurship ecosystem. Likewise, it discusses the building of ecosystems, technological parks, and their relationship with the industrial clusters. Finally, it analyzes the impact of the ecosystems on the regional environment. Additionally, the chapter will include mini cases and business examples.

The Digital Wall is the divide between digital adoption and the absence of this tremendous developing factor, which we can see in the included graph, where the point dividing a country’s takeoff toward development stagnates on the line of a $20,000 per capita income, and how this has a complete impact on a nation’s digital adoption. At the same time, there is a factor that encases all economies that are not giving the digital leap, which is stagnation itself, while on the other side of the wall, exponential growth is observed, a kind of catapult that projects countries to wealth once they decide to progress in the new technological age.