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Taking as reference a sample of around a hundred biographical materials on entrepreneurs in Mexico and Colombia, the purpose of this chapter is dual. Both to show the relevance and varied modalities that the biographical approach has enjoyed in business history research since the 1990s, and to display the intrinsic potential this modality of scholarship entails for entrepreneurship endeavors. In particular, it discusses the prospects to incorporate this body of empirical works into the large Latin American audience attending undergraduate, graduate and executive education programs in business, economic history and related fields. The chapter is organized into three sections. The first two are devoted to illustrate relevant patterns in the entrepreneurial trajectory of individuals and entrepreneurial families studied in each of the two countries under consideration. The last section identifies some conceptual issues that may impact current debates on Latin American business development as exemplified in recent business and economic history journal venues and scholarly conferences.

Charles Darwin's correspondence with Dr. John Down indicates that both men thought of people with mental retardation as being akin to humanity's evolutionary predecessors. Recent attempts to teach people with mental retardation to use the computer languages taught to apes show that this conceptualization of mental retardation has remained an unspoken and perhaps unformulated element in public and professional attitudes to people with disabilities ever since. Refuting this conceptualization points the way to a more productive approach to the conditions now classified as ‘mental retardation’.