  This paper explores the possibilities offered by informal communities of
practice to operate as "prototyping spaces" for innovation in the context of
developing economies. It begins by looking at the concept of "economic
complexity" and how it is useful in both guiding the priorities and evaluating
the challenges developing economies face when attempting to drive growth and
build measures of resilience, and raises the question of how these economies
can both introduce higher complexity activities while compensating for
latecomer disadvantages versus more complex economies. It then examines in
detail the case of the Twin Eagles Group, a Peruvian video game development
community in the 1990s, and how they reverse engineered technologies and global
practices to pursue their creative objectives. Based on this case, it concludes
by laying out some of the methodological challenges associated to researching
this sort of community because of the multi-sited nature of their activities.
