New formulas to promote university social entrepreneurship: An approach to student Startups

Abstract

The university environment is the ideal background for generating innovative projects; indeed, based on previous work and experience in entrepreneurship at the Complutense University of Madrid, entrepreneurship based on knowledge and innovation is high quality entrepreneurship that makes economies more competitive, which is vital for, among other things, improving employability. In Spain we are working about a process of promotion of the so-called Student Startup within the framework of the Draft Law for the Promotion of the Startup Ecosystem, which seeks to reform the incipient ecosystem and promote startups as engines of recovery and modernisation of the Spanish economy and which will undoubtedly strengthen entrepreneurship based on the transfer of knowledge from our universities. An attempt is made to analyse the reasons why social economy formulas (cooperative societies and worker-owned companies) should be taken into account as formulas for collective entrepreneurship in which not only economic but also social innovation is the main objective.