ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates how Indigenous entrepreneurship exists as a new and different economic response to a perceived opportunity for the betterment of a community. It shows through a case study of Bolivian quinoa growers the importance of community. The cultural, political, social, environmental and spiritual elements that make up Bolivia’s entrepreneurship are also explored in this chapter, using the Circles of Sustainability model and ethnographic research. Here readers discover how the road to global entrepreneurship came at a cost as new market opportunities created by Bolivian producers were met by insurmountable global competition and their sacred quinoa became a world commodity. What once seemed to be a development success turned into a market tragedy as competition from foreign countries and producers with greater resources and training caused Bolivia’s quinoa market to crash and spiral out of the original producers’ control. Nevertheless, like any resilient, determined entrepreneur, Bolivia’s originating producers have not given up and continue to forge forward, seeking new and different economic responses and opportunities to better their community, and the world. This chapter shows why and how.
