“When everything is a startup and everything is disruptive or when we hear the same terms over and over again, we can fall into apathy and indifference, and we lose the sense of excitement that initially drove us to immerse ourselves in the world of innovation.
With a single sentence, the Minister of Economy, Innovation, Business and Self-Employment of the government of La Rioja, Belinda León, explains to DISRUPTORES the contextual importance surrounding the approval and subsequent development of the Entrepreneurship Promotion Plan 2024-2027 approved at the beginning of the year.
And he explains it now, at a time when he can boast that Nearly fifty business organizations, technology centers, universities and other public and private entities have already joined the plan, a collaboration agreement to develop an ecosystem – “economic, social and cultural” – designed to consolidate and promote entrepreneurship throughout the region.
For the counselor, the evolution of entrepreneurship cannot be understood without the semantic evolution of this term. And not always in a positive way.
“Entrepreneurship, that activity that involves innovation, risk and creativity, described in many ways throughout history, supports a common denominator: the desire to make a dream come true. But one of the recurring questions is how to give more meaning to this term, recovering its original freshness and freeing it from the weight that little by little is dragging it towards superficiality,” indicates the counselor.
In your opinion, “startup, disruption, unicorn and entrepreneurial ecosystem are repeated ad nauseam in speeches, articles and conversations related to the business world, sacrificing freshness to turn them into marketing clichés.
Hence, for the counselor it is important that, “instead of clinging to a limited set of terms, we should be willing to explore new ways of communicating our ideas and visions.
We have been reflecting on all of this these months during meetings with organizations and entities from all social and economic fields, as well as with Rioja municipalities, with the willingness to develop a powerful ecosystem that favors entrepreneurship throughout the region.
The signatories of the La Rioja Entrepreneurship Promotion Plan, 44 so far, They will exchange information and improve coordination between the actions to be carried out by each of them.thus optimizing its effects and efficiency in achieving results.
Likewise, they assume participation in two annual sessions to share experiences and proposals for action that result in said objectives.
Belinda León, who returns to the semantic load of the word entrepreneurship, confirms that “as more and more entrepreneurs adopted these terms – startup, ecosystem… -, they have begun to lose their original impact.” What’s more, the counselor believes that ““What was once exciting and novel has now become common and predictable.”
Attract talent that wants to contribute
The language of entrepreneurship has become so standardized, in his opinion, that, “often, It is difficult to differentiate between a revolutionary project and a temporary one.
That is where the political strategy comes in to try to reverse that feeling. The counseling run by Belinda León seems motivated to “inspirear to generate dreamed realities, to work together in an education that values proactivity and experimentation, to generate spaces to share ideas and implementations and to attract talent that wants to contribute.
Its objective is none other, however, than “make profitable the consolidated technological hub of our community which makes us fourth in the national ranking of digital intensity, according to the latest report from the Cotec Foundation,” admits León.
One of those shared spaces, as well as one of the great projects of the government of La Rioja, will be the Scientific and Technological Park, a resource where the economy of the future will be developedbetting on employment, entrepreneurship, innovation, advanced services, business incubators and accelerators.
Added to this project is the EmprendeRioja brand, which supports a strategic plan that is committed to public-private collaboration“with the priority objective of turning La Rioja into the best region to undertake, to consolidate new initiatives and to recognize the value of the self-employed worker and the entrepreneur,” adds León.
“Because if we want to build that economy of the future We must keep the passion alive. That is the mantra to repeat to reinforce creativity: propose innovative solutions to problems and, above all, seek the contribution of all the actors who are involved in creating value, so that we replace terminological monotony with involvement, from action, in what constitutes an ambitious challenge for the region.” .
