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This paper presents a university service-learning program as an innovative model of assistance to deliver business development services to Mexican microenterprises.

The main objectives were to deliver business development services in situ at no cost to unprivileged enterprises, conduct research on microenterprises development and build up a service-learning model of teaching and learning for students in the field of economics and surrounding disciplines. It was implemented by the Autonomous University of Baja California. It plays an important role in providing real cases and concepts on business, economics, markets and fiscal regulations. The service-learning approach prepare to students to be generous, selfless, problem solvers and job creators.

The experience demonstrates that program can play a key role, both in supporting disadvantaged microenterprises and in providing meaningful learning experiences to students. The program has shown its ability to take advantage of institutional, human and financial resources already released to higher educations institutions (HEI) and government, to support social business extensively, as to make less critical the use of resources in the form of subsidies.

This program was employed by the Mexican State Government of Baja California as a compensatory public policy against the unemployment burden created by the global crisis between 2009 and 2013. About ten thousand individuals pushed to necessity-driven entrepreneurship or informal social enterprises were assisted, trained and formalized in the tax authority by 700 university senior students.

The Mexican economy is characterized by an extensive business fabric and entrepreneurial culture, which contributes to economic development, the social economy, and the proliferation of entrepreneurship. The effects are reflected in the quality of life, in the growth of employment, in the knowledge spillovers, and in the socioeconomic factors. This chapter offers a contextual review of enterprise creation in Mexico and its relationship on development and entrepreneurship. Following the Economic Censuses and National Survey on Productivity and Competitiveness of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (ENAPROCE in Spanish), the profile of entrepreneurs in the period 2009–2014 is analyzed. A conceptual contribution is made from the antecedents of the entrepreneurship to evaluate the success factors and determinants that influence the entrepreneurship in the context of Mexico. Within the findings, regions with entrepreneurial culture are precursors of a competitive process and impulse in employment; at the same time, regions with a low level of GDP per capita and low level of development register high rates of new enterprises, most classified as subsistence enterprises.