A unique start-up academy where sustainability-driven entrepreneurship and social innovation are at the core. Got an idea? Play with it at our Playpark!
What is the Playpark Vienna? The Playpark Vienna is one of seven unique academies created as part of the Intereg Project CERIecon aimed at fostering entrepreneurial skills in Central Europe in line with the EU regional innovation strategies. At the Playpark Vienna, we provide a space for young start-ups and future entrepreneurs who want to tackle sustainability challenges through their entrepreneu
rial creativity. Focussing on the topics social innovation, smart cities and sustainability, we provide a learning and development space for young entrepreneurial minds, and help them in the creation and implementation of their early business ideas trough coaching, workshops, teaching, networking and mentoring. But most of all, we offer a creative and cooperative setting highly linked with pioneers from civil society and regional stakeholder groups who share the aim of sustainable socio-ecological change. In short, we give sustainability-driven business ideas wings and help those who want change to fly together! What is our Mission? Our mission is to support, motivate and educate young sustainability-driven entrepreneurs in their early phase of starting a business. We see the primary purpose of sustainability-driven start-ups as tackling the major challenges of our society with the creative and cooperative mind-sets of “unusual” entrepreneurs. As sustainable change is an open and participatory learning process, sustainability-driven enterprises represent a new fundamental concept to business, shaped by cooperation, partnerships with civil society and responsibility. What do we do differently? Recently, we face a great wave of new start-up centres and co-working spaces all over the world. What makes the Playpark Vienna unique is:
• our explicit focus on self-organization - the involved start-ups shape and organize their working and learning environment to a great degree – they define “how to play” in the Playpark,
• a strong focus on collaboration with different stakeholder groups - such as NGOs, schools, researchers, etc.
• open house rules of a learning and development space - the Playpark is also a place for local and international events, communication and mutual social learning
• and a strong focus on social innovation and sustainability-driven entrepreneurship
Located in the very diverse 20th district of Vienna, our Playpark is very much rooted in the actual struggles and issues of a modern growing city. Enough with the “bobo entrepreneurship” – we want to bring entrepreneurship back from the sphere of hyper-consumption to active citizenship, and follow the motto: “Social inclusion through social innovation”
