Partnerships in business incubators in Brazil

For business incubators installed in a developing country with continental dimensions like Brazil, it should act in a collaborative way to join efforts and share experiences the Brazilian incubation stage is marked by initiatives from different regions and particular contexts. The annual seminar of the National Association of Entities Promoting Innovative Enterprises (ANPROTEC) is one of the main events held in Brazil on entrepreneurship and incubation of companies in the country. The National Seminar on Business Incubators and Technology Parks annually gathers the greatest contributions of the different elements of the National System of Innovation Brazilian and allows the analysis of the evolution of the themes and the main trends in management and operation of the different incubators presented. The present study aims to analyze the theme of business incubators in partnerships in Brazil, from the analysis of papers presented at the Seminar ANPROTEC in the years 2010 to 2014. The 144 selected works allow the identification of incubators partnerships such as clusters, partnerships with educational institutions, research and government programs. Three main themes were identified: examples of partnerships, technology parks and networking, with the latter registering a growing trend of interest and relevance. At the level of the authors involved, as almost 80.0% of authors published only one article in five editions of the event, a low recurrence and co-authorship is perceived among authors, which suggests a new research development potential in order to understand how these related cooperations and partnerships occur in Brazil.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Entrepreneurial predisposition and intention of students from the IFRN – Mossoró, Brazil

IFRN – Mossoró is a Brazilian technical education institute that develops several activities to encourage entrepreneurship, such as a curricular discipline about enterprise management and the existence of a business incubator. Despite efforts, the business incubator does not produce the expected effects. Therefore, what predisposes students to start their own business? If literature review explores determinant factors like the family and personal characteristics, it can be sustained that entrepreneurship skills can be taught since primary level, until university level. This paper presents the results of research project “Empreende IFRN” to understand the entrepreneurial predisposition and intention of the students from technical level courses. Data from 365 students from technical level courses reveal an increased entrepreneurial intention of students during time (from a 2 years period to someday in the future). The entrepreneurial behavior of parents affects students’ perception about starting their own business. Students also present a cautions behavior, preferring bank deposit and investment fund instead starting a business

Performance of business incubators: a systematic review of evidence

As a business incubator is located at the intersection of different actors (e. g. universities, governments, market), processes (e.g. entrepreneurship, innovation), micro and macro levels, investigate your performance is a great challenge for researchers. To understand what has already been done and the new paths to follow, here will be presented the state of the art of this topic in a systematic way. First, using bibliometric techniques. Second, analyzing the main contributions of the papers over the years. The results demonstrate an increase of interest in this topic, especially in the last 10 years. Using the tools of the Web of Science and some indexes (also suggesting a new one), relevant journals and routes for new research were identified. In addition to the greater presence of researchers from the United States of America (USA), Europe and Asia, it was also realized that many questions from the beginning continue today. The relationship with universities and research centers are great opportunities for further studies. Although network behavior is recognized as a relevant factor, many researches still present contradictory or ambiguous results. Delve deeper the dynamics of the incubation process, at each level of analysis, seems to be a more effective strategy for the research field progress.This work has been supported by COMPETE: POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007043 and FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope: UID/CEC/00319/2013.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The academic incubation impact: a selection process evaluation

Among the main issues pointed out in the literature, much of the attention in the research has been related to impact evaluation of business incubation. Although the internal process is considered as a black box by several studies, the main components of incubation are already known. The focus of this work is an evaluation strategy of the first component - the selection process. The effectiveness of this stage was evaluated as the alignment between the incubator desired profile and the companies entrepreneurial orientation. Although innovativeness was perceived as the main characteristic, the survival-of-the-fittest strategy was more evident. The entrepreneurial orientation offers a set of relevant selection criteria because it expands the term weak-but-promise into better-defined concepts and relates to the existing incubation literature. Therefore, this analysis presents a more structured approach to effectiveness evaluation of selection process, opening the incubator black box. As future work, it is suggested to evaluate pre-incubation activities to verify their impact along with this approach

AVALIAÇÃO DA INFRAESTRUTURA DE TECNOLOGIA DA INFORMAÇÃO DE EMPRESAS EM MOSSORÓ-RN

Este trabalho apresenta uma avaliação da infraestrutura de TI em organizações de diferentes ramos de atuação no município de Mossoró – RN. A pesquisa consiste na análise dos dados coletados via entrevista ao gerente de TI de cada organização. A análise comparou o percentual obtido em cada indicador com pesquisas nacionais sobre o uso de TI em empresas. Além dos indicadores nacionais, a pesquisa adotou o framework Control Objectives for Information and related Technology (Cobit) para identificar o nível de maturidade do processo AI3 – Adquirir e manter infraestutura de tecnologia. Os resultados demonstram que os gerentes de TI vêm conseguindo avançar com seus parques de informática. Mesmo com eventuais dificuldades de orçamento, foram encontrados vários serviços de infraestutura de TI com bons índices. A avaliação com base no Cobit revelou que 43% das empresas se encontram no nível 2 – “Repetível, porém intuitivo”, 14% se encontram no nível “Inicial/Ad hoc” e 14% com características do nível “Processo Definido”. Ainda há muitos processos informais. Nenhuma empresa atendeu plenamente a algum nível de maturidade, é preciso aprimorar as práticas atuais. Novos estudos poderão analisar outros aspectos da infraestrutura de TI em grupos específicos de organizações ou até mesmo utilizando outros frameworks como o IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL). PALAVRAS-CHAVE: tecnologia da informação, infraestrutura, gestão de T

AVALIAÇÃO DA ACESSIBILIDADE DO PORTAL IFRN À LUZ DO E-MAG E DO WCAG SAMURAI

Este trabalho apresenta uma avaliação da acessibilidade do portal IFRN. Segue a proposta de avaliação do e-MAG 2.0 (iniciativa do Departamento de Governo Eletrônico que adapta o WCAG 1.0 para os sites institucionais). Tendo em vista a consulta pública do e-MAG 3.0 (baseada no WCAG 2.0), este trabalho avalia também a partir do WCAG Samurai (proposta independente que vai de encontro ao WCAG 2.0). Os resultados apontam que o portal IFRN atende a muitas diretrizes de acessibilidade web, mas que ainda há ocorrências que precisam ser corrigidas para o pleno atendimento do nível de acessibilidade de prioridade um do e-MAG 2.0. Além de ser mais prático, o WCAG Samurai também amplia a discussão ao explorar novas questões que não estão presentes nas versões do WCAG. Por fim, novas pesquisas são propostas, e seguindo os princípios do e-MAG e WCAG Samurai, são indicadas algumas sugestões para melhorar a acessibilidade do portal IFRN