Business Ecosystems is a terminology proposed by Moore around 1993, relating the evolution of Business Environment with Ecology. Based on that theory, the idea of relate territorial conditions (as a demographical term) and the national culture (as social determinant) have come up. Nowadays just a few recent studies embrace the topic “Businesses’ ecosystem evolution” and almost none of them are related to economic development in growing economies.

Based on this structural “holes” in business literature, the aim of this research is addressing the fact that a business ecosystem cannot be the same in all developing countries and neither can be the firms’ behavior, the hypothesis of this thesis is that this happened because the business culture is engaged with the national culture and the conditions of the territory. Defining then the relationship between territory and national culture with the structure of the business ecosystem and highlighting the importance of the Small and Growing businesses in developing economies and contributing to the research of this topic. To achieve this objective, a brief revision of the existing literature, documents, reports and a couple of interviews with organizations involve with the topic have been done.

Business Ecosystems is a terminology proposed by Moore around 1993, relating the evolution of Business Environment with Ecology. Based on that theory, the idea of relate territorial conditions (as a demographical term) and the national culture (as social determinant) have come up. Nowadays just a few recent studies embrace the topic “Businesses’ ecosystem evolution” and almost none of them are related to economic development in growing economies.

Based on this structural “holes” in business literature, the aim of this research is addressing the fact that a business ecosystem cannot be the same in all developing countries and neither can be the firms’ behavior, the hypothesis of this thesis is that this happened because the business culture is engaged with the national culture and the conditions of the territory. Defining then the relationship between territory and national culture with the structure of the business ecosystem and highlighting the importance of the Small and Growing businesses in developing economies and contributing to the research of this topic. To achieve this objective, a brief revision of the existing literature, documents, reports and a couple of interviews with organizations involve with the topic have been done.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. INTRODUCTION 1
2. LITERATURE REVIEW 5
2.1 National Culture, Territory and Business Ecosystem. 5
2.1.1 Conceptualizing Business Ecosystem 5
2.1.2 Conceptualizing Culture and its relation with Business 6
2.1.3 Conceptualizing Territory and its relationship with Business 9
2.2 Correlation between Territory and National Culture with Economic Growth 10
2.2.1 Externalities of Territorial and National Business Strategy 10
2.3 Business Ecosystem in Developing Countries 11
2.3.1 Small and Growing Firms’ Business Ecosystem. 11
2.3.2 Ecosystem Population: Small and Growing Firms. 12
2.3.3 Small and Growing Businesses in Developing Economies. 15
2.4 Entrepreneurial Business Ecosystems 18
2.4.1 Conceptualizing Entrepreneurial Ecosystem 18
2.4.2 Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Developing Countries: Latin America. 19
3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 21
3.1 Theoretical Foundation 21
3.2 Research Statement 24
3.3 Research Objectives 24
3.4 Research Design and Implementation 24
3.4.1 Data Collection 25
3.4.2 Data Analysis 26
4. BUSINESS ECOSYSTEM OF SMALL AND GROWING FIRMS IN CENTRAL AMERICA: EL SALVADOR EXAMPLE. 31
4.1 Business Ecosystem in El Salvador. 31
4.1.1 Territory, National Culture, and Labor specialization. 33
4.1.2 National Situation. 35
4.1.3 Small and Growing Business’ Ecosystem Structure. 37
5. DISCUSSION 42
5.1 Territory Specialization 42
5.2 Businesses’ Sub-ecosystems 43
6. CONCLUSIONS 46
6.1 Connections between SGBs’ ecosystems, and economic development. 46
6.2 Small and Growing Business’ Capabilities that deserve to be developed. 47
6.3 Limitations 47
7. REFERENCES 49

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