Innovative entrepreneurship emphasizes new products, services, production processes, or business models. Such innovation should increase the prospect of firm growth, wealth creation, and the increase of value-added jobs which are crucial for economic development. Policy makers seeking to foster economic growth should consider policy instruments aimed at encouraging innovative entrepreneurship as well as conventional entrepreneurial activities that produce economic and societal benefits, at the local, regional, national and international levels. Incubation has historically been one of the most popular innovation policy instruments. This project aims at: i) providing a taxonomy of incubation that will encompass heterogeneity in incubators¿ affiliation, size, services delivered, partnerships, location and so on, ii) developing a theoretical framework aimed at conceptualizing the effect of incubation on start-up performance and iii) providing rigorous, data-driven evidence about the effect of incubation on start-up performance.
Contribution to the literature
We believe this project may add interesting insights on the role that incubators can play. As to the extant literature, it responds to the call of Eveleens et al. (2017) of inspecting more closely and deeply the reasons why incubators can positively impact the performance of incubatees. It is also expected to contribute to (partly) address a common critique on the growing (especially empirical) literature on entrepreneurial ecosystems (Stam, 2015; Kuckertz, 2019) which ¿has been relatively silent on the interaction of entrepreneurial ecosystem components [¿..and] remains too actor-centric and largely neglects interactions and the specific narratives of a specific entrepreneurial ecosystem¿ (Kuckertz, 2019, p. 2).
In this respect, this project would add an interesting insight to the recent stream of literature in entrepreneurship policy that analyses the joint effectiveness of different measures on innovative start-ups (see Giraudo et al., 2019; Hottenrott and Richstein, 2000): institutional arrangements that are able to combine typically incubator¿s services (e.g. co-working space, mentorship services, networking) with other instruments (venture capital, subsidies,¿) are expected to be shown to function as powerful signals about the quality of the start-ups towards third parties, thus helping innovative entrepreneurship to truly deliver on its promise.
Eveleens, C. v. R. F., & Niesten, E. (2017). How network-based incubation helps start-up performance: a systematic review against the background of management theories. Journal of Technology Transfer, 42(3), 676-713.
Giraudo, E., Giudici, G., Grilli, L., 2019. Entrepreneurship policy and the financing of young innovative companies: Evidence from the Italian Startup Act. Research Policy, 48(9), 1-18.
Hottenrott, H., Richstein, R., 2020. Start-up subsidies: Does the policy instrument matter?. Research Policy, 49(1), 103888, 1-21.
Kuckertz, A., 2019. Let's take the entrepreneurial ecosystem metaphor seriously! Journal of Business Venturing Insights, 11, e00124.
Stam, E., 2015. Entrepreneurial ecosystems and regional policy: a sympathetic critique. European Planning Studies, 23(9), 1759-1769.
Potential applications, scientific and/or socio-economic impact
The project has several remarkable implications for a diversified battery of stakeholders. In fact, it identifies well-defined domains where an incubator may exert a beneficial effect towards incubated start-ups. Relatedly, given the recent great emphasis on innovative entrepreneurial ecosystems and on the ways to trigger and nurture them (Stam, 2015; Kuckertz, 2019), the here proposed analysis offers a clear pathway to regulators for alimenting the development process through the establishment of incubators which enhance interactions and collaborations between the various relevant actors. We aim also at showing that the so-called liability of newness or adolescence suffered by young innovative firms (Stinchcombe, 1965; Bruderl and Schussler, 1990) can at least to some extent be ameliorated, if not circumvented, by the joint use of appropriate quality signals and network enlarging tools, where the latter can also be put in place by the policy makers through the establishment and further development of incubators.
We also like to contribute to the debate among entrepreneurs and start-up founders about the channels through which young innovative firm survival and medium/long-term performance may be improved. In fact, the plethora of policy instruments at their disposal should not blind them to the fact that each policy intervention works by intervening on specific mechanisms. A deeper understanding on ¿what policy instrument serves better what¿ with particular focus on incubators is of paramount importance for innovative entrepreneurship to have the socio-economic impact everybody hopes it is going to have.
Bruderl, J., Schussler, R., 1990. Organizational mortality: The liabilities of newness and adolescence. Administrative Science Quarterly, 530-547.
Kuckertz, A., 2019. Let's take the entrepreneurial ecosystem metaphor seriously! Journal of Business Venturing Insights, 11, e00124.
Stam, E., 2015. Entrepreneurial ecosystems and regional policy: a sympathetic critique. European Planning Studies, 23(9), 1759-1769.
Stinchcombe, A., 1965. Social structure and organizations. In: Handbook of organizations. J. G. March, Chicago: Rand-McNally, 142¿193.