"Parquesoft": a study of social entrepreneurship in software industry cluster in Cali, Colombia

Abstract

The institutional change in occurred in the last years in developing countries like Colombia supports and legitimizes innovative and productive activities. But this recent dynamic has been missed; ins- tead social science literature has been focused on the study of destructive and criminal activities. The study problem is to understand how in countries like Colombia, formal industrial sectors such as software development rely on existing informal networks, which emerged as a response to stringent and exclusivist pre-industrial societies. And in particular how the “tunnel effect”, term coined by Albert Hirschman in the 1970s, emerges as an organization alternative to coordinate productive resources within unequal societies. The study case is about Parquesoft, an example of this new formal industry in Colombia based in a different group of values and objectives that makes the difference in the way to make business and think the development.