Abstract

The aim of this paper is to study the key challenges of incubators by focusing on four groups: economy, policy, industry, and culture.
The nature of this research is mainly qualitative and, its findings suggest that there are three key challenges of incubators: 1) high
number of jobs creation, high number of graduate companies and high survival rate of tenants lead to economic development,
2) high cooperation of R&D and high innovation lead to technology commercialization, and 3) high sustainable growth, high
entrepreneurial climate and high smart growth networking led to fostering entrepreneurship.

Practitioners, researchers and experts consider business incubation program as a successful tool to support economic growth
and technology transfer. This paper includes some of case studies of incubators and some of their implementations, and how
they affected jobs creation, jobs rate, and technology transfer

Literature review

Many articles discuss the importance of incubators
for developed and developing countries.
Entrepreneurs use incubators services for
networking and accessing resources. In addition
to its importance in jobs creation and technology
commercialization and transfer. Also, they do play
a vital role in supporting startups. Many studies
indicate that entrepreneurship, incubators and
innovation contribute to the international economy,
smart growth and economic development
In addition, other current studies about incubators
models in developing countries suggest that quality
initiatives and careful planning of incubators may
present a pathway to stimulate the economy in
the developing countries.

Methodology

The research is based on desk-research and
interviews using several variables. Interviews were
conducted with the top management personnel of
the Small Business Administration (SBA) located
in Washington, DC, US.

The study interview design is based on two charts. First, the Key Challenge
Chart consists of four groups: 1) Economy, 2) Policy, 3) Industry, and 4)
Culture. Each group is measured on a scale of 1, 2, 3 and 4. The number
reflects the challenge in each incubation program ,the scale of 1 represents
a low challenge; scale of 2, low to moderate challenge; scale of 3, moderate
challenge; and scale of 4, high challenge. Second, the radar chart consists
of three groups: 1) Economic development; 2) Entrepreneurship, and 3)
Technology commercialization. In addition, each group is measured by
variables and each variable is a rank-order independent variable [e.g.,
low (L, 60%), moderate (M, 80%), and high (H, 100%)].

Findings

Business incubation programs have a positive effect on employment,
support economic growth, and technology commercialization.
First, the indicators are divided to four groups. The results of key challenges
with respect to the economy and culture indicated the highest challenges
of their incubators with high employment, high survival rate, high start-up
companies, and high rate of client companies inside the incubators on a scale
of 4. Policy and industry described their programs as medium challenge of
their program with medium incubator funding, medium role of industry,
medium Incubators type, medium incubators services and medium Incubators
size. Overall, the key challenges present a positive impact of incubators an
economy, culture, policy and industry.
Second, table 1 shows that the respondents answered high variables for all
groups. Overall, the three groups presented high indicators, which reflect
the positive potential on the economic development, entrepreneurship, and
technology commercialization.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the results of the interview showed the
three key challenges: 1) A high number of jobs created,
a high number of graduate companies, and a high
tenant survival rate lead to economic development; 2)
R&D collaboration and innovation lead to technology
commercialization; and 3) high sustainable growth,
an entrepreneurial climate, and a high smart growth
networking lead to fostering entrepreneurship.
It also proves that authors are trying their best to
identify incubators best practice.

References

Ajmei, R. (2013). ‘Incubators as Tools for Economic Growth and
Technology Transfer in Developed Countries’, European Journal of
Business and Management, Vol 5(16), pp. 113-119.
Available online: https://www.iiste.org/Journals/index.php/EJBM/
article/%20view/6186

Acknowledgement

This paper is part of published book & journal paper. I would like to
express my genuine appreciation to the authors.