This paper aims to investigate process of requalification of economic functions in the ongoing transition to the digital economy experienced by the American city of Lafayette, in the state of Louisiana. As a starting point an extensive analysis of the history of the city and its surroundings was carried out, accompanied by semi-structured and in-depth interviews with respondents involved in the current process of reconversion investigated. In this transition it was relevant the Lafayette’s historical, demographic, cultural, spatial, and socioeconomic dynamics. According to Bourdieu’s theoretical framework, it was sought to identify the main cognitive categories, both in relation to the socio-institutional dynamics and individual variations, emerging from the interviews. As result, the analysis of the habitus and the main economic, cultural, social, and symbolic capitals mobilized by community members it was possible to identify themes and categories used to describe the local business ecosystem and its components. It was also possible to reveal alliances and disputes that forge and characterize Lafayette’s business environment, taking into account relationships among its main historical agents: White Americans vs. Indians, White Americans vs. Cajuns, White Americans vs. Blackcreoles.

Creativity and the ability to innovate are commonly pointed to as being core attributes of the competencies that organizations need to differentiate themselves and obtain comparative advantages in the competitive world of contemporary business. This premise has led to countless organizations requiring that the professionals they employ be creative, as opposed to having purely a command-control profile. Given this context, the main objective of this article is to investigate a sample of 7,924 graduates of executive development programs. These were alumni from more than 40 year-groups of executive education courses that were offered by a business school headquartered in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, and who between 2010 and 2016 underwent a MBTI instrument, a device for measuring individual psychological preferences (Myers & Myers, 1997) that was developed from Jung’s psychological types (Jung, 2013a). The expectation was that it would be possible to see by how much the profiles of these alumni had changed over the period investigated, with an increase in the psychological function, Intuition, as either dominant or auxiliary in the psychological types. The results, however, demonstrate a high preponderance of the Thinking and Sensing preferences, which are associated with command-control type professional profiles. The Intuition and Perceiving profiles, which are commonly related to creativity and innovation, had the lowest incidences throughout the historical series that was investigated.

This paper aims at investigating entrepreneurial ecosystems through analysis of interactions among their main agents, in different spatialities of a medium-size city: the city center (downtown), a suburban street, and its main shopping mall. As a theoretical framework the Jacobs approach (2011), the theory of practical action (Bourdieu, 2010), and the theory of interspecific ecological interactions (Lopes & Russo, 2010) were used. In methodological terms, a case study approach was carried out. The findings indicate different types of ecosystem interactions, considering the influence of the context, technology, and innovation as well as the historical trajectories and Habitus that characterize them.