UB students and recent graduates have at their disposal a new co-working area to develop entrepreneurial projects
On Wednesday 29 October, the Faculty of Economics and Business opens the new co-working area addressed to students and recent graduates who develop entrepreneurial projects. Its main aim is to foster collaborative work and creativity. Besides the new facility, young entrepreneurs can take profit of tutoring, consultancy and training services. Activities to promote the establishment of relations between users and companies will be developed too. The area opened its doors on 6 October. Since then, it has already hosted fifteen projects developed by young entrepreneurs and it has received two new applications.
On Wednesday 29 October, the Faculty of Economics and Business opens the new co-working area addressed to students and recent graduates who develop entrepreneurial projects. Its main aim is to foster collaborative work and creativity. Besides the new facility, young entrepreneurs can take profit of tutoring, consultancy and training services. Activities to promote the establishment of relations between users and companies will be developed too. The area opened its doors on 6 October. Since then, it has already hosted fifteen projects developed by young entrepreneurs and it has received two new applications.
The project was born after observing that entrepreneurship has become a professional option for students of Economics and Business. The Faculty wants to facilitate and promote this option among students. Facultyʼs teaching staff will advise entrepreneurs and final projects will be used to identify potential users of the area.
The co-working area can be used by students and people who got their degree, at the most, two years ago from the Faculty of Economics and Business or any other UB school. Some seats are reserved for guest entrepreneurs. Those interested in using the area must submit their entrepreneurial project to an assessing committee. In total, the area can host eighteen permanent entrepreneurial projects and eight guest ones. The projects which are being developed now at the area deal with fields like gastronomy, sport, 3D printing, mobile apps, new language learning technologies and the consumption of local products. Each project can use the area between six months and one year.
Users have a their disposal a 300 sq. metre area that includes electricity connection, wireless internet connection, a meeting room, a place to make presentations, a room to organise training activities, individual lockers, etc. The co-working area also has kitchen and dining facilities and an outdoor rest area. An agreement signed with the Faculty of Fine Arts enables students of the subject Interdisciplinary Approaches to develop their projects at the area.
The co-working area emerges from the collaboration among the Faculty of Economics and Business, the Entrepreneurship Chair and the Barcelona Entrepreneurship Institute. Similar initiatives developed by Anglo-Saxon universities were used as a model to create the area, which wants to establish relations with different organizations and networks. The aim is to work together with other national and International co-working areas, in order to enable UB entrepreneurs to make stays at foreign areas and host guest entrepreneurs. For instance, the company SCA, which sells stationery products, has alreday begin to promote the area.