Using fuzzy logic in selecting people and ideas to participate in public programs of support to business start-ups

In this paper we propose a fuzzy control model that can help to choose and filter the application for grants in business start-up programs run by public institutions. We think that using fuzzy logic has advantages over regular procedures since we move into a complex and vague stage of performance. Fuzzy control introduces expert knowledge in a very natural way, it uses linguistic variables and inference processes that are characteristic of ordinary language, which facilitates decision-making in complex situations. Our model considers on the one hand the business idea and on the other the person as entrepreneur. Indicators and criteria that experts consider relevant to the evaluation of the grant are modeled as linguistic variables and treated as antecedent and consequent of a fuzzy inference engine, whose output provides the final assessment of the application. At the end of our paper we solve a simple case study to clarify the procedure.