Social entrepreneurship and rural development in Ecuador: productive networks

The last decade has brought a change of thought regarding social development in Ecuador, conceptually involving the territory as an agent of social transformation. Starting from this paradigmatic change, this paper shows how it is possible to combine a series of alternative development strategies in the rural area from a territorial perspective. This research shows the mechanisms that allow the development of organizational capacities in rural communities as a response to the needs of each territory, so that these micro initiatives favor global business development, integrating the three dimensions of local space: Culture, the economy and society. The traditional vision had a functional approach that conceived the development of the rural sector, from its capacity of support of resources and supply of agricultural products to the most populated sectors and more developed areas. The new vision involves the development of a territorial community as the set of resources (economic, human, institutional and cultural) that constitute its own development potential and presents the associativity as a response to the different interrelations between territorial agents: networking, collaboration, adapted common strategy. In this research we will see how these processes of change, entrepreneurship and innovation merit a deep and respectful knowledge of the traditional and cultural elements, resorting to both endogenous and exogenous factors, without obviating that the process of change belongs to the local actors who are the ones Have the capacity to transform the territory with their participation.