Journal of Co-operative Studies 54(2), 5-16

Abstract

In recent years, universities in Canada have been increasingly tasked with promoting entrepreneurship. There are three primary ways in which they have taken up this mandate. The initial impetus, going back some decades, focused on active participation by university researchers, often in collaboration with existing businesses, in developing new products and start-ups. These initiatives, drawing on government-supported research findings, were often seen as a basis for promoting regional economic development (Menzies, 2000). A second concern has involved the teaching of entrepreneurship, while a third approach has focused on supporting students and recent graduates to develop their own new start-ups (Sá et al., 2014). This paper examines the potential of the university to promote entrepreneurship in a rather different manner. Specifically, it examines the university as a site or “place” of social entrepreneurship, where the university community both provides the entrepreneurial talent and is also the primary beneficiary of the entrepreneurial activity. It investigates this prospect through the examination of a particular case, one which involves collective entrepreneurship and a co-operative business model.

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