mpact Evaluation of Innovative Entrepreneurship in Economic Development: Situation of Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas

Abstract

The economic resources available for production are scarce; however, these same resources have alternative uses to the extent that human ideas are infinite. In this premise, the concept of innovation rests; therefore, an innovative entrepreneur will be who not only seeks the efficient combination of productive factors, but who also aims to produce organizing economic resources in different ways. From a macroeconomic perspective, the Ecuadorian economy is primary exporter, that is, its income depends on productive activities with very little added value, while from a microeconomic perspective its productive activity is scarcely innovative; therefore, the enterprises and the companies do the same (primary activities) in the same way (without added value). Assessing how innovative an economy is implies estimating how innovative its population is (individual creative initiative) to draw conclusions of a collective nature (province, city, region) from this particular analysis and, in this way, evaluate the possibilities of achieving economic development, as well as estimating the sustainability of productive activities (companies). With the purpose of evaluating the impact of innovation, this study was developed in three stages (planning, execution and presentation of results), which are an adaptation of the eight steps suggested by the impact evaluation methodology of the European Union 2006.