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There still is a scarcity of studies examining the dynamics of the accumulation of innovative capabilities. This paper examines such issue in eight software companies in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, finding that: there were inter and intra-company differences in terms of speeds of capability accumulation for specific technological functions; younger companies have accumulated capabilities more rapidly; speeds of capability tended to decrease as companies accumulated more innovative levels of capabilities, offering a prospect for the acceleration of the innovation process. Such evidence is to deepen our understanding of the firm-level technological accumulation process,= and provide some notion of the time needed to obtain the benefits from efforts on learning and innovative capability building. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper relates two distinct themes: entrepreneurship and ethnicity. They are normally treated by different academic traditions: economists and businessmen deal with the first, while anthropologists, sociologists and historians usually investigate the latter. Due to the recent development of areas like Organizational Culture and Economic Sociology, approximations between these two themes have occurred, allowing a conjoint treatment of them in the field defined as ethnic entrepreneurship. Studies in this new area recognize that many resources and job possibilities for immigrants are available at their own communities, where networks of social capital pervade. More than driving definite conclusions, this work explores some insights in this area, taking São Paulo's historical socio-economic experience as reference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]