CORDOBA, June 28 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Minister for University, Research and Innovation, José Carlos Gómez Villamandos, chaired this Friday the signing of the agreement signed by the Director General of Andalucía Emprende, Daniel Escacena, and the Rector of the University of Córdoba (UCO), Manuel Torralbo, through which an Andalusian Entrepreneurship Centre (CADE) will be set up on the Rabanales Campus, to promote entrepreneurship among members of the Córdoba university community and encourage the creation of innovative companies based on knowledge.
As reported by the Junta de Andalucía and the UCO in a joint note, Gómez Villamandos has highlighted the “determining role” that Andalusian public universities play in injecting knowledge into the young population, which is why his department designed at the beginning of this legislature a strategy to implement CADE in all of them.
“We have realised that bringing entrepreneurship support services closer to where knowledge is generated works and favours the creation of innovative companies, which have a differential value for increasing the competitiveness and sustainability of the economy,” said the head of the University, after pointing out that with this centre the number of facilities in the network of university entrepreneurship support centres has been increased to six.
Thus, CADE-UCO joins those implemented at the University of Almería (UAL), the International University of Andalusia (UNIA) in Malaga, the University of Jaén (UJA), with two devices, one in the capital and another on the Linares Campus, and Pablo de Olavide, in Seville.
As detailed by the counselor, the objective of his department is that at the end of the year all students of the network of Andalusian public universities who want to start a business have at their fingertips a comprehensive support, advice and accompaniment service so that they can develop their business ideas without having to travel, completely free of charge and with the assurance that they are viable.
“This will increase, on the one hand, the probability of survival of projects in the market and, on the other, the competitiveness of those that consolidate as companies, contributing to the strengthening and sustainability of the economy,” he said.
Gómez Villamandos also stated that in Andalusia, almost 61% of the people who have started a business activity through Andalucía Emprende so far this year are young people (under 40 years old) and one in four (25%) has a university education.
“We are talking about more than 6,000 young people and more than 2,600 university students, figures that show that there is an entrepreneurial vocation among Andalusian youth, that there is qualified talent and that the Andalusian Government’s commitment to promoting innovative and knowledge-based entrepreneurship is necessary and decisive,” he stressed.
Finally, he considered the collaboration and involvement of the administrations to be “essential” to materialize this network, because “by joining efforts we are contributing to a more prosperous future for our young people and for society.”
For his part, the rector of the UCO, Manuel Torralbo, congratulated himself on “the launch of this new center that will reinforce the policy of promoting entrepreneurship that the institution has been developing among its students and the university community in its set”.
The rector of the University of Córdoba has highlighted, at this point, the necessary union of efforts “to contribute, through initiatives such as this, to the socioeconomic development of our territory.”
CADE-UCO
Specifically, the UCO CADE will be integrated into the Coworking Space located in the Rabanales Agri-Food Campus and will be made available to entrepreneurs free of charge. To this end, Andalucía Emprende will assign a technician, who will provide advisory, training and awareness services on entrepreneurship matters, as a priority, to all members of the university community. In addition, it will carry out all the necessary technical coordination tasks with the university for the optimal development of the signed commitment.
Furthermore, under the agreement signed, both institutions undertake to jointly develop actions that encourage entrepreneurial initiative in university students and to collaborate in the promotion and dissemination of programs that contribute to economic development and job creation through services, tools and inter-administrative collaborative formulas.
They will also collaborate in the organisation and development of actions to raise awareness and promote entrepreneurial culture, in advising and tutoring entrepreneurial ideas and projects, in the design and delivery of training in entrepreneurship, and will facilitate business accommodation and access to financing rounds.
Added to this is support for research in entrepreneurship, the development of actions to promote the internationalization of entrepreneurial activity and the promotion of financial education for social innovation.
This agreement is based on the fact that both the Department of University and the UCO consider it of “high interest” to develop practical training activities in the field of entrepreneurship that complement academic training and encourage the acquisition of entrepreneurial skills in students. With this, they aim to foster their entrepreneurial capacity, preparing them for the performance of professional activities, as well as to facilitate their employability.
