Harvesting the results of the mentoring process of knowledge intensive startups

Abstract

Mentoring is often used by business development programs to assist startups. In this paper we look at the perceptions of protégés and mentors about this process, hereby different business development programs in Europe were incorporated. It was hypothesized that there is a relationship between contact frequency and amount of support delivered to the protégé. This hypothesis was partly supported. Furthermore we hypothesized that if the amount of support is higher that the positive associated outcomes like trust and benefits to the protégé also will be higher. This hypothesis was mainly supported for the benefits of the protégé. Last also the relation between short and long term outcomes was hypothesized. The research showed that there is a relation between the benefits and the profoundness of the relation in the long term. The corresponding implication for program managers are discussed below