ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND INNOVATION ECOSYSTEMS FROM THE GLOBAL SOUTH: TERRITORIES, ANCESTRAL KNOWLEDGE AND THE PLURIVERSE IN LATIN AMERICA
This symposium proposes to analyze, from economic development studies, the political economy of entrepreneurship and innovation, and heterodox approaches to development, the configuration of entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystems in Global South contexts marked by indigenous territories, ancestral knowledge, and disputes over models of progress and well-being. It seeks to understand how entrepreneurship policies, business institutions, innovation strategies, and productive strengthening programs interact with local economic structures characterized by historical inequalities, community economies, and pluriversal cosmovisions regarding territory.
The central purpose of the symposium is to debate how different forms of entrepreneurship—individual, indigenous, artisanal, social and community-based—and different innovation strategies impact territorial economic development, local productivity, competitiveness, and trajectories of market insertion in Latin America. In this sense, the aim is to identify what economic-institutional arrangements, business models, organizational capacities, and forms of governance allow for the articulation of financial resources, human capital, regulatory frameworks, and ancestral knowledge in a more equitable, sustainable, and culturally legitimate manner, as well as what mechanisms reproduce dependencies, asymmetries, and forms of coloniality in the name of entrepreneurship, innovation, and development.
The symposium is organized around three thematic axes. First, it will address entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystems in emerging economies, analyzing structural and subjective dimensions of the environment and their relationship to the creation, sustainability, and scaling of businesses. This axis engages with public policy agendas, incubation, acceleration, and strengthening of innovative SMEs in Latin America, as well as with recent proposals on innovation as an organizational habit. Second, it will examine indigenous and artisanal economies in different Latin American territories. The focus is on hybrid business models, cultural value management, the reorganization of labor, gender roles, income, and economic autonomy, in order to problematize the relationship among market, identity, and development. Third, it will analyze pluriversal entrepreneurship as a space for dialogue among diverse actors who, based on their identities, territorialities, and cosmologies, drive forms of community enterprise, social innovation, territorial energy initiatives, and experiences of buen vivir. This axis seeks to broaden conventional notions of enterprise, innovation, and value creation, showing how organizational forms emerge that are oriented not only toward profitability, but also toward the reproduction of life, territorial sustainability, and cultural legitimacy.
The discussion is grounded in empirical experiences from different Latin American countries, including contexts where productive potential, indigenous and popular economies, institutional weakness, and socio-environmental conflicts converge. Based on these cases, it will analyze how public, private, academic, and community actors co-produce entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystems that can either reproduce power asymmetries or open spaces for economic self-determination, the preservation of ancestral knowledge, and situated innovation.
The symposium calls for researchers in economics, business administration, business studies, development studies, innovation management, decolonial studies, and representatives of communities, public entities, businesses, social organizations, and entrepreneurship and
