The History of Entrepreneurship in Mexico

The legitimacy of history: dictated Bloch. Today, in many areas of knowledge, and of course in entrepreneurship (Wadhwani, 2010), it has become superlative. The aim of this chapter is analyzing the literature about entrepreneurship in Mexico mainly from the last 11 years of studies on the subject. Through this review, we want to highlight the progress in the field, as well as deeper opportunities in its research as a result of it, the profound need for incorporating them not only in the national academic debate but also into the entrepreneurship ecosystem and in specific public policies.

This chapter is focused in a methodological frame to study the practices of entrepreneurial agents and the startups in nontechnological sectors in the middle-income countries. The startup of ideas involves three phases that comprise the first life cycle of a possible company considering too sociocultural aspects as external factors implied in the creation, prototype, and entry to markets. In Latin America, the type of risks experienced by companies in their early stages of life and incubation are not known in a timely manner. The lack of information on entrepreneurship and its agents in countries such as Mexico also inhibits visualization of heterogeneity of contexts to business development, and how some regions are more propensity to boost startups than others, in different sectorial and branches of knowledge. Mexico like rest countries in Latin America has a high percentage of SMEs focused in sectors that are innovative but not are participating in the last technological waves. For this reason, it is necessary to know how these agents prepare, manage, and apply entrepreneurship in accordance with institutional, technological, and sociocultural dispositions to structure their experiences and make more vigorous the territorial entrepreneurial. Small and medium businesses are building new paths taking advantage of territorial and cultural opportunities. Applying the framework proposed in the last part of this chapter is presented a case of study of an entrepreneur oriented to craft brewer production in Tijuana, Mexico.

There is a consensus in the literature on entrepreneurship on the crucial role of environmental conditions in the identification, development, and quality of entrepreneurial initiatives. Given the relevance of entrepreneurship and the lack of evidence, academic debates request more evidence regarding the main determinants of entrepreneurial activities in emerging economies. Inspired by these academic debates, the objective of this chapter is to provide a better understanding of the role of entrepreneurship in Mexico. Our preliminary results allow us to identify applied research trends to study the entrepreneurial spirit in Mexico, as well as elements to discuss the myths, realities, and challenges faced by Mexican entrepreneurs during the last government administration. Our chapter contributes with implications for entrepreneurs, researchers, and decision-makers.

The Mexican economy is characterized by an extensive business fabric and entrepreneurial culture, which contributes to economic development, the social economy, and the proliferation of entrepreneurship. The effects are reflected in the quality of life, in the growth of employment, in the knowledge spillovers, and in the socioeconomic factors. This chapter offers a contextual review of enterprise creation in Mexico and its relationship on development and entrepreneurship. Following the Economic Censuses and National Survey on Productivity and Competitiveness of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (ENAPROCE in Spanish), the profile of entrepreneurs in the period 2009–2014 is analyzed. A conceptual contribution is made from the antecedents of the entrepreneurship to evaluate the success factors and determinants that influence the entrepreneurship in the context of Mexico. Within the findings, regions with entrepreneurial culture are precursors of a competitive process and impulse in employment; at the same time, regions with a low level of GDP per capita and low level of development register high rates of new enterprises, most classified as subsistence enterprises.

The creation of small businesses in Mexico since 1990, largely the result of the diversification of activities in rural areas, is one of the most prominent strategies, both for the improvement of the quality of place and life and for value of localized resources. Although the rural context imposes barriers, social capital and networks constitute an advantage for rural entrepreneurship, since shared values and norms such as the local context allow the articulation of economic, productive, social, and cultural resources for production and sale of significant goods for the region. The cases analyzed show the value of the collective dimension for the start of productive projects, which have contributed to reconverting and sometimes reconfiguring old resources such as land, ecosystems, landscape, animals, and crafts, in assets to start a business.

The purpose of this chapter is to illustrate the contribution made by migrants in the territory that hosts them, particularly when they transfer their knowledge to members of the community. In the specific case of the sea urchin fishery, it is described how the Morishita family in Baja California undertakes the sea urchin value chain, from the location of population banks to the commercialization of the product in the Japanese market and, by therefore, the promotion of development in rural places while starting a culture of export and currency generation. An adventure of opportunities that has been successful for more than 50 years, whose origin is the sustainable use of “a plague” that today is a delicacy for many.

This chapter's objective is to analyze, with a long-term perspective, the formation of an entrepreneurial culture in Mexico's Midwest, specifically in the state of Jalisco, in terms of the geographical environment, the culture in general, and the local economic institutions that, when viewed interconnectedly, will globally impact the practices, representations, and imaginaries of persons who at a given time have made the decision to undertake profitable economic activities – individual and collective entrepreneurs, in other words. To this end, we have divided the text into two sections. In the first, we conceptually review what we understand as entrepreneurial culture; in principle, we deconstruct its terms and then conjugate them from a social science perspective. We also emphasize the importance of studying the milieu as a scenario of action with different arenas, where a variety of agents have been involved. In the second part, without sidelining conceptual analysis, we present concrete empirical evidence of the role played by culture and local economic institutions that shape entrepreneurial culture in Midwestern Mexico over time, specifically in Jalisco. The text ends with some final considerations.

The main aim of this chapter is to analyze the history of entrepreneurship in the footwear cluster during the twentieth century and the dawn of the twenty-first century, around the actions of the manufacturers installed in the city of León, Guanajuato, Mexico. The methodological process was triangulated by three forms of approach to the object of study: the first consisted on the literature review; the second was a longitudinal analysis of socioeconomic and technological indicators; the third was the application of in-depth interviews to five footwear manufacturing entrepreneurs. The main finding was the collaborative model of the footwear cluster in the face of crisis cycles that has historically been facing; this allows to understand the historical challenges of entrepreneurship in the cluster, as well as public policies that have influenced its behavior pattern and the strategies that have outlined its entrepreneurship model.

This chapter is about an analysis and reflection on the actions, programs, and regulatory frameworks of the Mexican government for the promotion of entrepreneurial activity during the twentieth century. A documentary review is presented based mainly on the presidential reports available in the virtual legal library of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the Center for Documentation, Information, and Analysis of the Chamber of Deputies (Cámara de Diputados), and various publications of experts on economic history, considering the twentieth century: from the year 1900 with the end of the Porfiriato until the six-year term of Ernesto Zedillo that ended in 2000. The public policies of these 100 years were reviewed and based on this, was analyzed the importance assigned to the creation, development, and consolidation of companies and their importance in public policies. Special emphasis is given to instruments for the creation of new businesses or the development and strengthening of small- and medium-sized enterprises.