ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how Slovenia can activate its rich potential for cooperativism and a social economy, as a whole, given that these concepts fall on very fertile historical ground in the country, as we have already seen. Tadej Slapnik, State Secretary in the Office of the Prime Minister, illustrates the potential for worker cooperatives in Slovenia via four scenarios to build on them in different ways, and makes the case for their ability to foster economic democracy in the country. The Slovenian Forum of Social Entrepreneurship, founded by Slapnik, is then geared to actively “grow” a cooperative society. Sebastjan Pikl further enriches this development through his evocation of a “dawning network society”, building on the US-Spanish sociologist Manuel Castells. For Pikl, the network society, despite its threats of social underdevelopment, can act as a local-global accelerator for a social economy and social entrepreneurship in Slovenia, if its potential for “self-programmable work” is unleashed. He, together with Urša Zgojznik, underlines his argument through the practical demonstration of the case of Tekstilnica, a social enterprise with an innovative approach to the collection, sorting, re-use and recycling of old clothes and textiles. Frane Adam, one of Slovenia’s leading social scientists, and his team build on such examples and make the case for a shift in focus within the social economy to a particular form of social enterprise: newly emerging (micro and small) businesses with a social impact, furthered mostly by (highly) educated young people. For Adam and his co-workers, this phenomenon does not have much to do with the “classic” type of socially responsible company but is about companies that are in their very essence a business model for solving social or environmental problems, creating a positive social impact. All of this then paves the way for the final outlook of this chapter, in which we turn to the rising phenomenon of a new type of knowledge-based social entrepreneurship “kickstarted” by young, innovative, entrepreneurial Slovenes (or usually groups of them), who with the help of international crowdfunding websites raise the necessary funds to see their projects realised. Indeed, this outlook forms a bridge between the knowledge-based social economy and the finance-based living economy.
