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This chapter provides an overview of entrepreneurship in Latin America and indicates the relevance of this for economic development in Mexico and Chile. Through the literature review we explore first entrepreneurship and then the relationship between this and economic development, mainly in the developing countries. Therefore, the evolution of entrepreneurship in Latin America is analyzed and a comparative data drawn from Mexico and Chile presented. We made a specific analysis of the undertakings at the services sector, their initial stages, and their degrees of participation in early entrepreneurial activity. Finally, considering the importance of the Sustainable Development Goals developed by the United Nations, entrepreneurship as a trigger for social and economic impact in Mexico and Chile was also studied. This study summarizes the broad exploration of the importance of entrepreneurship in Latin America. It indicates how important it is to focus on the task of solving social and economic problems; exploratory, descriptive, and documentary researches have been utilized for this purpose.

This study aims to analyse the influence of the pillars (hard and soft skills) of digital academic entrepreneurship on students' entrepreneurial intention.

This was done by adopting a quantitative methodology involving empirical research with a sample of 761 university students from two countries and adopting structural equation analysis to validate the theoretical model proposed.

The results indicate a direct influence between hard and soft skills and entrepreneurial intention, and a positive, indirect influence between these and entrepreneurial intention mediated by the dimensions of the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) – entrepreneurial attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control. Therefore, the pillars of digital academic entrepreneurship have a direct and indirect influence on university students' entrepreneurial intention.

This study also contributes to better operationalization of entrepreneurial education in university environments, since the development of hard and soft skills can be planned better based on the model proposed here. Considering the relations between the dimensions of hard and soft skills and those of TPB, this study shows there can be an influence on students' entrepreneurial intention.

In this study, a new and innovative construct is inserted in the model of entrepreneurial intention: “structural pillars of digital academic entrepreneurship” through structural equation modelling, to determine the degree of influence of these pillars (hard and soft skills) constructs on HEI students' entrepreneurial intention.