Title: Sustainable entrepreneurship in industrial ecology: the cheese case in Mexico

Authors: Manuel Alexis Vázquez Zacarías; Eduardo Aguiñaga; Elías Alvarado Lagunas

Addresses: Facultad de Contaduría Pública y Administración, Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, Av. Universidad s/n, Ciudad Universitaria, San Nicolás de los Garza, Nuevo León, México ' EGADE Business School, Tecnológico de Monterrey, Eugenio Garza Laguera esquina, Zona Valle Oriente, Monterrey, Nuevo León, México ' Facultad de Contaduría Pública y Administración, Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, Av. Universidad s/n, Ciudad Universitaria, San Nicolás de los Garza, Nuevo León, México

Abstract: The world is experiencing an increase of externalities market failures where residues of the industries value chain affect the environment. The industrial ecology proposes to deal with externalities by using the waste of one process as the input of another. This point is where sustainable entrepreneurship plays a key role encouraging the creation of new innovative decomposer firms that specialise in transforming residues into commercial products. This study focuses on the way that externalities create opportunities for decomposer firms by developing a qualitative case about the cheese value chain represented by a vertically integrated multinational firm in Monterrey (Mexico). The analysis includes the steps proposed as the entrepreneurship model for decomposer firms. The importance for the academia lies in finding that processes and technologies are key in the opportunity creation for this type of firms that emerge from the residues created by the value chains where multinational firms exist.

Keywords: sustainable entrepreneurship; innovation; industrial ecology; cheese value chain; decomposer firms; technological metabolism; sustainability; Mexico; multinational enterprises; MNEs; multinationals.

DOI: 10.1504/IJTGM.2017.082378

International Journal of Trade and Global Markets, 2017 Vol.10 No.1, pp.19 - 27

Received: 09 Aug 2016
Accepted: 06 Sep 2016
Published online: 21 Feb 2017 *

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