Motivaciones del microemprendimiento necesidad frente a oportunidad

Abstract

This article presents a literature review on the motivations for microentrepreneurship: necessity versus opportunity, with a special focus on Ecuador, the province of Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas, and the canton of La Concordia. A systematic narrative review (2000–2025) was conducted following PRISMA/PRISMA-S, consulting Scopus, Web of Science, SciELO, and Latindex. Empirical studies and reviews that operationalize entrepreneurial motivation using GEM classifications or equivalents and report results in innovation, productivity, employment, formalization, or scaling were included. The synthesis shows that institutional quality, financial depth, and entrepreneurial education tilt the motivational mix toward opportunity, associating with a higher probability of innovation and job creation; in contrast, informality and credit constraints sustain need-driven profiles and limit growth. In Ecuador, the coexistence of high early entrepreneurial activity and the predominance of necessity-driven motivations helps explain the gap between the abundance of initiatives and their limited capacity to scale. At the subnational level, in Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas and La Concordia, progress has been made in incubation and digital adoption, improving visibility and sales, but bottlenecks in management and financing persist, hindering the transition to opportunity-oriented trajectories. The paper provides an integrative framework fordesigning differentiated policies based on motivation, combining phased formalization and microfinance for units in need, and investment credit, innovation vouchers, and sectoral mentoring for units with opportunities.