Cuban-American entrepreneurs: Chance, complexity and chaos

Bouchikhi (1993) introduces themes from chaos and complexity theory to gain an understanding about chance in entrepreneurship. We expand on these themes using an example from the Cuban immigrants to South Florida to increase the dynamism of Waldinger et al.'s (1990) model of immigrant entrepreneurship. These complexity and chaos themes are: (1) large differences in outcomes can come from Small differences in initial conditions; (2) largely unpredictable, radical changes can be intermixed with and become directly dependent on incremental, predictable changes; (3) short-term predictability can accompany long-term nonpredictability; (4) seemingly random patterns can show an apparent attraction to specific configurations; and (5), mutual influence among a small number of predictors can appear to be random. An example from among the leading Cuban-born entrepreneurs illustrates three levels of generality in entrepreneurship theory. Most generally, this per son's career reflects abstract conclusions about entrepreneurship in the larger community. At a second level, it illustrates the uniqueness in the pattern of entrepreneurship for one sub-group, a specific age cadre. At a third level, it illustrates the uniquenesses of an individual's personal history. Insights at these three levels of generality appear as we follow a systematic, theory-based, case-study method.