Sweden gives all employees time off to be entrepreneurs
For the last 20 or so years, workers in Sweden have enjoyed an unusual perk – a statutory right to take six months off and start their own business.
The Right to Leave to Conduct a Business Operation Act is one of a series of rights afforded to Swedish employees, allowing them to take time off to study or care for a family member. It’s also one of the reasons the country’s capital, Stockholm, has become Europe’s start-up capital, second only to California’s Silicon Valley for the number of unicorns (billion-dollar tech companies) that it produces per capita.
One such Swedish start-up success is Spotify. Set up in 2006, the company floated on the New York Stock Exchange last year and has a market capitalization of $24.5 billion. Others include Skype, which was acquired in 2011 by Microsoft for $8.5 billion, and Mojang, the company behind Minecraft, which was also acquired by Microsoft, in 2014 for $2.5 billion.
Continued here