The Heterogeneity of Small Enterprises: A Key for Industrial Policies in Nicaragua

This article looks at an institutional trend occurring in some developing countries, specifically in Central America, which homogenises small industries with the effect to provide a unified type of support and not to respond to the peculiar needs implicitly manifested by the different categories. In contrast, this work uses the case study of clusters of small furniture industries in Nicaragua to identify the heterogeneous categories of small firms and their particular characteristics, rationalities, bottlenecks and potentials. This is seen as an essential operation to promote appropriate support policies that can result in increasing sectoral and territorial development.