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Startups in a Developing Region: The Case of Brazil's Northeast

Brazil's persistent economic volatility highlights the need for Latin American countries to transition from exporting commodities to producing innovative goods and services. Higher- income Brazilian regions like the Southeast have been more successful at this shift than the Northeast, which remains toward the bottom of the World Bank's upper-middle-income range. The goal of my research is to examine how northeastern Brazil can become a more innovative regional economy. One route is to increase high-potential entrepreneurship in cities like Fortaleza, the node linking Brazil to global Internet traffic and the capital of a state that built a 3,000 km fiber optic network to spur innovation. I studied the cases of four high-potential startups to understand the factors that affect their growth and internationalization in the Northeast. To collect my data, I interviewed the founders of each venture as well as consultants and officials who support new firms. In addition to expected barriers like bureaucracy and low foreign language proficiency, I found that the region's oligarchic society impeded the growth of its startups and Brazil's long history of protectionism hindered their internationalization.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:arizona.edu/oai:arizona.openrepository.com:10150/621189
Date January 2016
CreatorsDenton-Schneider, Jonathan Daniel, Denton-Schneider, Jonathan Daniel
ContributorsGantz, David, Alsua, Carlos J., Fishback, Price V.
PublisherThe University of Arizona.
Source SetsUniversity of Arizona
Languageen_US
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext, Electronic Thesis
RightsCopyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author.

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