Advised by Jorge Ramirez-Vallejo

Competitiveness is determined by a variety of factors. Yet, a crucial element that drives competitiveness is productivity, as it depends on the microeconomic capability of an economy and the level of sophistication of local competition at the regional and cluster level. Macroeconomic competitiveness and endowments matter, but never to the same extent as productivity and microeconomic competitiveness. Thus, this paper will only briefly analyze the endowments and the macroeconomic competitiveness of Colombia before deep diving into the software cluster of Bogota analyzing first the context in which it operates, Bogota, before taking a closer look at the cluster itself. Finally recommendations on how to support and further drive the software cluster’s development in Bogota shall be presented. 1.1 Country Profile & Economic Performance Colombia is situated at the northern tip of South America and is Latin America’s oldest democracy with a long standing tradition of constitutional government. The country counts a relatively young population of 46.9 million people. 58 % of Colombia’s inhabitants are between 15 and 54 years old providing the country with a positive demographic outlook for the short to mid term. Furthermore, the country is, despite vast jungle areas and high mountains ranges known as the Andes, densely populated in comparison to the OECD (41.7 vs. 34.4 population density per square kilometer). The urbanization rate is high with 75.3 % compared to 82 % in th