Entrepreneurship in Ecuador

In Ecuador, as in many countries worldwide, entrepreneurship has gained a great deal of importance in the past decade, both as an economic and as scholarly activities, and as the focus of public policy. However, entrepreneurial activities are not new in this small, open economy, located by the Pacific Ocean in the northern part of South America. Throughout its history, the primary export productive specialization of Ecuador has been accompanied by a succession of boom-and-bust cycles usually linked to the production of a single commodity. In the latest cycle, between 2004 and 2014, there was an unprecedented inflow of foreign currency due to the boom of commodity prices, in particular oil, whose revenues contributed to financing the government’s social and infrastructural plans in that decade. This abruptly ended after the collapse in the price of oil in 2014, and the recovery was still underway when the pandemic hit this economy. In times of crisis, entrepreneurial activities are a necessity, and this country has long been continuously experiencing events that have challenged the entrepreneurial spirit of the Ecuadorian people.