Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

This article analyses entrepreneurial initiative and its success through a case study. The study examines the trajectory of the company Germaine de Capuccini within the context of an expanding cosmetics industry in Spain over the last fifty years. It shows the strong influence of the economic, social and institutional environment on what seems to be a paradigmatic case of a Schumpeterian entrepreneurial initiative. Firstly, it examines the evolution of the sector until the creation of the company at the end of the 1960s. Then it explains the inception of Germaine de Capuccini and its initial growth strategy. Thirdly, it analyses the company’s expansion process and that of the Spanish cosmetics industry from the 1980s. Finally, conclusions are drawn with respect to the influence of the environment on the entrepreneurship.

In recent years there has been renewed interest toward the entrepreneur and its role in economic development. In the case of Spain, but especially in the less developed regions such as Andalusia, the entrepreneur has been identified as responsible for economic backwardness. This paper is an approach to the long-term study of Andalusian entrepreneurship. We have applied the methodology of social network analysis to the documentation of incorporation contained in official records between the years 1886 and 1959. This has verified the presence of major business creation networks acting in all productive sectors of the region, constituting an endogenous entrepreneurial drive regardless of the actions of entrepreneurs and foreign companies. The study of the personal characteristics of network members and their comparison with those of employers who did not participate in them suggests that the networks included the most dynamic entrepreneurs. Among network members was an important presence of owners and college graduation, specially law graduates and engineers. It has also identified the importance of family ties in the configuration of business networks.

In this study an effort is made to explain the keys to the business success of Spanish immigrants in Cuba in the first half of the twentieth century, using as its basis the theoretical developments in social capital. The text measures the extent of this greater business luck with respect to economic opportunities in Spain, describes the professional integration process in Cuba and even quantifies the degree of integration of women in the world of work. Furthermore, a revision is made of the keys to this success and the business weaknesses attributed to the Spanish are questioned in light of those keys: economies of enclave created by the Spanish minorities themselves, institutions that were even stronger than the Cuban ones —typical of those of a weak state in construction— along with the solidarity that their common citizenship offered them.

This paper uses a large sample of British and Spanish entrepreneurs to determine the origin of their initial capital between 1800 and 1939, with emphasis on the role played by banks. The sources are, for England, the Dictionary of Business Biography edited by David Jeremy, and, for Spain, regional compendia of short biographies. The study shows, among other results, the importance of marriage and other extra-economic sources for the Spanish entrepreneurs during the nineteenth century, and the absence of banking in supporting the initial capital needs of entrepreneurs, both British and Spanish, throughout the time covered by the study. The most important difference between the two countries is the possibility of most British entrepreneurs to get initial capital from informal capital markets.