Are they really helping? : an assessment of evolving business incubators'value proposition

Most studies about business incubation describe an array of available services but often fail to present the tenants’ assessment quality. We set out to investigate if business incubators differ in terms of their value proposition. To do so, we identify three distinct generations of business incubators based on different dimensions included in their value proposition. We pose the question of whether the generation affects the extent to which tenant companies use the different dimensions of the incubator’s value proposition. Using data collected within business incubators and their respective tenants, the results show that while incubators claim to have similar support structures regardless of their generation, tenants in the older generations make less use of the incubator’s service portfolio. We discuss the implications of our findings for incubator managers, prospective tenants and policy makers

Success factors of business accelerators in three European cities : Paris, London, Berlin

peer reviewe

Do intangible assets and pre-founding R&D efforts matter for innovation speed in start-ups?

The launch of the first product is an important event for start-ups, because it takes the new venture closer to growth, profitability and financial independence. However, entrepreneurship literature lacks theory and data on new product development and innovation speed. Integrating insights form new product development literature with resource-based theory, we construct a conceptual framework concerning the antecedents of innovation speed in start-ups. In particular, we argue that pre-founding R&D efforts and intangible assets such as team tenure, experience of founders, and collaborations with third parties are important for innovation speed. We collected a unique dataset on 99 research-based start-ups (RBSUs) and use an event-history approach to test our model. We find that RBSUs differ significantly in their starting conditions and that these differences have a significant effect on the time it takes to launch the first product. The impact of starting conditions on innovation speed differs however between software, medical-related, telecom and other technologies. Although intuition suggests that start-ups that are further in the product development cycle at founding launch their first product faster, we find that software firms starting with a beta-version experience slower product launch. Next, it is shown that team tenure and experience of founders leads to faster product launch. Contrary to expectations, alliances with other firms do not significantly affect innovation speed and collaborations with universities lead to longer development times. The insights of this study enhance our understanding of product development processes in start-ups and the differences between slow growers and fast growers. Keywords: Intangible assets, New Product Development and Start-Up

Success factors of business accelerators

Business accelerators are a relatively new type of incubating start-ups. They help the nascent firms succeed in the early stage of development by providing support services. Success factors of accelerators can minimize the startup teams’ failures. The present research discusses three main factors of success: selection process and criteria, business support services and network. In this study, the lens of institutional theory is also used to propose that success factors help accelerators acquire the legitimacy in the eyes of their stakeholders. Legitimacy plays a key role in the business accelerators survival and growth. The variety of business accelerators is driven by the stakeholders’ needs and requirements. Following this, this study also emphasizes different types of accelerators: Generic, Specific, Private and Public. Empirical evidence is based on multiple case studies representing thirteen accelerator programs from Europe (Paris, London, Berlin)