Technology business incubators as engines of growth: towards a distinction between technology incubators and non-technology incubators

Business incubators are an increasingly popular tool for promoting job and wealth creation. Yet given the heterogeneity of incubation models, it is not always clear how incubators operate, what their main characteristics are and how can they best contribute to job and wealth creation. If technology is central in promoting economic growth and new firm creation the crucial mechanism in transferring new knowledge to markets, then technology incubators have the biggest potential to contribute to economic growth. We define technology incubators by their strategic choices in terms of mission, linkages to universities and geographical location. We investigate their nature by comparing the levels of business services provision, selection criteria, exit policy and tenants’ characteristics. Our sample includes 12 incubators located in six Northwestern European countries and a total of 101 incubated companies. Data were collected in both incubators and among their tenants. Results show that technology incubators provide more tenants with their services, select younger companies and practice stricter exit policies. Additionally, they tend to attract more experienced teams of entrepreneurs. Our main contribution is a better understanding of the technology incubators impact against the remainder population of business incubators. We speculate that incubators not focussed in incubating technology might not be contributing to company creation at all. Further, the low levels of service provision are both a product and a consequence of slack selection criteria and weak exit policies. Finally, we discuss the implications of our findings to business incubator managers, policy makers and prospective tenants

Management of e-technology in China

"e" technology is bringing about many challenges for companies, in particular for their managers. This concerns a vast range of business processes in many sectors of the economy and in nearly every country of the world. In rapidly industrializing China, companies and other organizations are actively finding their way by adapting, developing and exploiting new e-technologies. The paper's focus is the identification of the management issues in implementing e-technology in China. The paper reports on research into difficulties of establishing and operating e-business in China. In particular, it discusses management related to e-technology sharing and application. A brief review of literature is followed by the analysis of three recent case studies: an international IT services alliance, a financial services provider and an international manufacturing joint venture. All case companies are applying e-technology in China, but the role of e-technology differs in the three cases: adding a service line to the existing business processes; developing a new business process; and increasing efficiency and effectiveness in business processes. The conclusions present the emerging management issues: cooperation is a key asset in networking; the choice of business models plays an important role; adequate management attention for details such as a training program is require

A look at cloud architecture interoperability through standards

Enabling cloud infrastructures to evolve into a transparent platform while preserving integrity raises interoperability issues. How components are connected needs to be addressed. Interoperability requires standard data models and communication encoding technologies compatible with the existing Internet infrastructure. To reduce vendor lock-in situations, cloud computing must implement universal strategies regarding standards, interoperability and portability. Open standards are of critical importance and need to be embedded into interoperability solutions. Interoperability is determined at the data level as well as the service level. Corresponding modelling standards and integration solutions shall be analysed

Evaluation of design for business: survey of providers of design services

This report outlines the findings of PACEC’s survey research and consultation with providers of design services in the East Midlands in terms of the support they provide or may provide in the future in integrating design in SMEs

Bringing More Competition to Real Estate Brokerage

This paper provides an economic analysis of the residential real estate brokerage industry. We find that the traditional model for residential real estate brokerage services may be dated, and could be improved substantially with some public policy interventions that spur innovation. We believe that there are numerous barriers to entry that are slowing the emergence of new models for serving consumers. Some of these barriers are likely to be anti-competitive. Examples include discrimination against new brokerage models and online brokers who wish to join multiple listing services; state legislation that would require minimum service requirements, effectively preventing "a la carte" offerings; and prohibitions by real estate commissions on providing rebates to customers. In our opinion, none of these practices should be allowed. We offer three broad policy recommendations: First, federal and state antitrust authorities should carefully scrutinize efforts to limit competition in the residential real estate brokerage market. Second, state governments should refrain from adopting laws or rules that inhibit competition in real estate brokerage. Third, Congress should allow the Federal Reserve Board and the Treasury Department to permit banks, which have long been natural potential entrants into this business, to offer residential real estate brokerage services through separately capitalized affiliates. We do not know which business models are likely to succeed in the marketplace for residential real estate services in the future. We do believe, however, that judicious public policy interventions could have a marked impact on improving services and lowering costs for home buyers and sellers. Click Here for a shorter version of this paper, published in The Milken InstituteReview .

Cloud Services Brokerage: A Survey and Research Roadmap

A Cloud Services Brokerage (CSB) acts as an intermediary between cloud service providers (e.g., Amazon and Google) and cloud service end users, providing a number of value adding services. CSBs as a research topic are in there infancy. The goal of this paper is to provide a concise survey of existing CSB technologies in a variety of areas and highlight a roadmap, which details five future opportunities for research.Comment: Paper published in the 8th IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing (CLOUD 2015

Compliance advisory service feasibility study

This report identifies areas or methods of regulatory compliance information and advice to SMEs in the region that are inadequate or deficient. It recommends additional services that will benefit SMEs in the region taking into account the business support simplification agenda, state aid, legal liability, environmental and equality issues

E-commerce and its impact in logistic management: A state of art

Logistics management is defined as that part of the supply chain process that plans, implements, and controls the efficient, effective flow and storage of goods, services, and related information from the point of origin to the point of consumption in order to meet customers' requirements. Traditional logistical issues may be amplified by an e-commerce venture. Adopting e-commerce may greatly expand the marketplace. The organization needs to be concerned with its ability to deliver its product to potential customers. Realizing the importance of E-commerce in logistic management, an attempt has been made in this paper to review the existing literature with the objective to gain insights into the impact of E-commerce in logistic management. The advantages of the E-commerce in logistic management are offered. Finally, summary of findings and calculations are presented

Hybrid Solution for Integrated Trading

Integrated applications are complex solutions, whose complexity are determined by the economic processes they implement, the amount of data employed (millions of records grouped in hundreds of tables, databases, hundreds of GB) and the number of users. Service oriented architecture (SOA), is now the most talked-about integration solution in mainstream journals, addressing both simple applications, for a department but also at enterprise level. SOA can refer to software architecture or to a way of standardizing the technical architecture of an enterprise and it shows its value when operating in several distinct and heterogeneous environments.System Integration, Data Integration, Web Services, Java, XML, Stock Market

Beyond knowledge brokerage: An exploratory study of innovation intermediaries in an evolving smallholder agricultural system in Kenya

The recognition that innovation occurs in networks of heterogeneous actors and requires broad systemic support beyond knowledge brokering has resulted in a changing landscape of the intermediary domain in an increasingly market-driven agricultural sector in developing countries. This paper presents findings of an explorative case study that looked at 22 organisations identified as fulfilling an intermediary role in the Kenyan agricultural sector. The results show that these organisations fulfill functions that are not limited to distribution of knowledge and putting it into use. The functions also include fostering integration and interaction among the diverse actors engaged in innovation networks and working on technological, organisational and institutional innovation. Further, the study identified various organisational arrangements of innovation intermediaries with some organisations fulfilling a specialised innovation brokering role, even as other intermediaries take on brokering as a side activity, while still substantively contributing to the innovation process. Based on these findings we identify a typology of 4 innovation intermediation arrangements, including technology brokers, systemic brokers, enterprise development support and input access support. The results indicate that innovation brokering is a pervasive task in supporting innovation and will require policy support to embed it in innovation support arrangements. The paper is not normative about these arrangements.Smallholder agriculture, innovation intermediaries, agriculture innovation, knowledge brokers, Kenya