IE Business School, Bankinter and Accenture promote support for entrepreneurs from large firms

Companies that take part in the initiative will now include projects designed to support entrepreneurship in their annual reports, as just one more component of their CSR strategy. Participants in the presentation of the initiative included Pedro Guerrero, President of Bankinter, Juan José Güemes, President of the International Center for Entrepreneurial Management at IE Business School, Joaquín Garralda, Dean of Academic Affairs at IE Business School, Vincent Moreno, President of Accenture, and Ernst Ligteringen, CEO of Global Reporting Initiative.

There are currently no explicit guidelines or agreed formula used to gauge the efforts made by large organizations to foster entrepreneurship in society, although many companies do just that. Hence, Bankinter, IE Business School and Accenture, with the support of Global Reporting Initiative, are taking the step of including formal recognition of the support they provide for entrepreneurship projects in their annual reports. "Entrepreneurs need decisive support from large companies, who need to realize how vulnerable recently created companies are", say those heading the project.

Large companies can provide support for local start-ups in different ways: by contracting their services or products, providing financial support, or furthering entrepreneurial development with mentoring programs, assessment, promotion, the integration of new partners, thus helping to foster the generation of new ideas among employees.