Business support within business incubators

Business incubators (BI) have been established worldwide as tools for company creation and small businesses support. BIs claim to help their tenants by providing them with the optimal conditions for increasing early stage survival. Practitioners and researchers agree that business support is a crucial dimension of BI. Yet this feature is seldom researched. In this study we investigate to what extent business incubators support their tenants overcome their developmental problems. Results show that tenants do not experience many problems and when they do business support is not necessarily sought. Furthermore, our data suggests that business support is not preferentially sought within incubator environment. When this happens, support provided by the BI does not contribute to problem solving. Finally, we discuss the impact of the type of BI in helping their tenants

Are Business Incubators helping? The role of BIs in facilitating tenants’ development

Business incubators (BI) are among a variety of initiatives to stimulate economic growth by promoting the creation and development of new companies. The rapid growth of BIs in recent years confirms their importance in the economic fabric. In this study, we conceptualize BIs using insights from knowledge based theory of the firm, resource-based view thinking and capabilities literature. BIs will be seen as service providers geared towards helping their tenants in solving developmental problems. The more problems the BI helps to solve the bigger the incubation value for tenants; further, as tenant firms solve problems they develop important capabilities which will yield increase their chances of survival once they graduate. Results show that tenants unequivocally seek support after experiencing problems. Solving those problems is a function of BI support and other external sources part of each tenant firm’s network of contacts. Age and human capital of tenant firms have a negative impact in the total number of the problems solved, suggesting BIs’ deficiencies in helping more experienced and older tenants. Our main contribution is to shed light on the processes of delivering support to young firms within BIs. Importantly, we assess the value of the BIs’ intervention by measuring the amount of developmental problems they help tenants to overcome. Finally, we discuss the implication of our finding to BI managers, prospective tenants and policy makers

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

L’avenir de la recherche en entrepreneuriat en Allemagne : Stratégies et principaux points thématiques

La recherche en entrepreneuriat continue à évoluer. Ce champ de recherche qui va de l’interprétation de la nature du champ à la signification accordée à chaque thématique est soumis à des changements. Tenter de brosser un portrait de l’évolution de la recherche en entrepreneuriat en Allemagne s’avère intéressant, dans la mesure où cela permettrait de sélectionner des sujets prometteurs. Cette contribution vise à relever ce défi. À cet effet, nous avons interrogé les membres du « groupe de recherche sur la création d’entreprises », nous leur avons demandé d’apprécier l’importance de points centraux et de domaines thématiques particuliers. Ainsi, le financement et la recherche scientifique sur les facteurs de succès se révèlent être à l’heure actuelle les sujets auxquels on accorde la plus grande importance. À l’avenir, ce domaine de recherche pourrait continuer à évoluer et devenir une discipline autonome, prenant en compte les exigences nationales et internationales de la recherche.Entrepreneurship research is constantly evolving. Changes occur in basic strategies of the field and in the relevance that is ascribed to particular topics. Trying to sketch the outlines of potential future developments in German-speaking entrepreneurship research is of particular relevance to scholars that attempt to work on promising issues. The goal of this contribution is to provide such an outline. We surveyed the members of the work group on entrepreneurship research of the FGF, the German Association of Entrepreneurship Scholar, and asked them to address the current and future relevance of key approaches and particular topics in entrepreneurship research. As a result, the dominant themes today seem to be finance and research on success factors. In the future, the field may develop towards a distinctive domain, influenced by nation-specific research issues and international research requirements.La investigación académica del espíritu emprendedor – Entrepreneurship – se desarrolla continuamente. Tanto los conceptos básicos del Entrepreneurship como la importancia prestada a cada uno de los campos de la investigación cambian constantemente. Con este estudio intentamos esbozar el futuro desarrollo de la investigación académica de lengua alemana porque esto parece ser interesante para todos los que busquen temas de análisis prometedores. Por eso hemos consultado a los miembros del círculo de trabajo « Investigación del emprenderismo » (FGF) para averiguar qué opinan sobre los modelos centrales y otros temas parciales. Actualmente, la financiación y la investigación en el campo de los factores de éxito son los aspectos más importantes en la discusión académica. En el futuro, este campo – influido por temas nacionales y por requisitos internacionales – podría seguir desarrollándose para luego convertirse en una disciplina propia.Die Entrepreneurshipforschung entwickelt sich laufend weiter. Von grundlegenden Auffassungen über die Natur des Forschungsfeldes bis hin zur Bedeutung, die den einzelnen Themenfeldern eingeräumt wird, ist das Feld Veränderungen unterworfen. Ein Versuch, die zukünftige Entwicklung der deutschsprachigen Entrepreneurshipforschung zu skizzieren, ist vor allem für die Auswahl von Erfolg versprechender Themen interessant. Ziel dieses Beitrags ist es, einen solchen Versuch zu unternehmen. Zu diesem Zweck wurden die Mitglieder des Arbeitskreises Gründungsforschung des FGF hinsichtlich ihrer Einschätzung der Bedeutung zentraler Ansätze und einzelner Themenbereiche befragt. Zum heutigen Zeitpunkt wird dabei der Finanzierung und der Erfolgsfaktorenforschung die höchste Relevanz eingeräumt. In Zukunft könnte sich das Feld weiter in Richtung einer eigenständigen Disziplin, im Spannungsfeld zwischen nationalspezifischen Problemen und internationalen Forschungsanforderungen, entwickeln

Cross-Cultural Competences and International Entrepreneurial Intention:A Study on Entrepreneurship Education

To identify and foster potential international entrepreneurs are important goals for entrepreneurship education. Based on the theory of planned behavior (TPB), we argue that International entrepreneurial intention (IEI) is a predictor of international entrepreneurship (IE). In addition, cross-cultural competences are hypothesized as antecedents to IEI and moderators of the relationship between TPB elements and IEI. We integrate two elements of cross-cultural competences (global mindset and cultural intelligence) in a TPB-framework to identify the drivers of students’ IEI. We analyze a sample of 84 students with OLS regression and moderation analysis. OLS regression results reveal no significant direct effects from cultural intelligence and global mindset on IEI. Moderation analyses suggest a negative, significant moderating effect of cultural intelligence on the relationship between personal attitude and IEI and on subjective norms and IEI. Therefore, simply enhancing global mindset and cultural intelligence does not contribute to students’ IEI. More is required from entrepreneurship education, such as improving the perception of international entrepreneurship as a valuable career choice

El papel de la experiencia en la relación entre confianza y resultados de la cooperación entre PYMEs en economías en transición

To achieve successful cooperative inter-firm relationships, trust between the partners is a key factor. As trust that is based on the self-commitment of the partners to behave in a non-opportunistic way (maxim-based trust) takes time to evolve and relies upon the cooperation experience of the partners, we expect that the positive performance impact of maxim-based trust grows over time. The purpose of this paper is to test the moderating effect of cooperation experience on the relationship between maxim-based trust and performance in the context of cooperating small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in two transformation economies (Czech Republic and Slovenia): Based on a sample of 124 SMEs, a moderated regression analysis reveals that trust and cooperation experience impact positively on performance. However, we could not detect a moderated relationship. We conclude that maxim-based trust may be an effective and efficent coordinating mechanism in the dynamic context of cooperating SMEs in transformation economies, but the absence of a moderating effect indicates that firms do not seem to increase the effects of maxim-based trust over time._______________________________________________La confianza es uno de los elementos principales que permiten obtener éxito en las relaciones de cooperación entre empresas. La confianza basada en el propio compromiso de las empresas and que no es fruto de un comportamiento oportunista (maxim-based trust) se desarrolla a través la experiencia en cooperación entre las empresas, por lo que surge con el tiempo. Por ello, consideramos que los efectos positivos de este tipo de confianza aumentan conforme pasa el tiempo. El objetivo de este trabajo es medir los efectos que la experiencia en cooperación provoca sobre la relación entre la confianza basada en el compromiso (maxim-based trust) and los resultados obtenidos de la misma en el caso de la colaboración entre pequeñas and medianas empresas (pymes) en dos economías en transición (República Checa and Eslovenia): El análisis de regresión moderada, basado en una muestra de 124 pymes, muestra que la confianza and la experiencia en cooperación ejercen un impacto positivo sobre los resultados, aunque no se observa relación moderada. Concluimos que la confianza basada en el compromiso (maximbased trust) puede ser un mecanismo de coordinación efectivo and eficiente en el contexto dinámico de la cooperación entre pymes en economías en transición. No obstante, la ausencia de efecto moderador indica que los efectos en las empresas de la confianza basada en la el compromiso no aumentan con el tiempo