The Truth is Still Out There: What We Still Need to Understand about Business Incubation

Abstract

Business incubators (BI) have been in existence since 1950s, and they offer a range of support services to nascent entrepreneurs. Many governments across the world promote incubators as a policy tool for the promotion of entrepreneurship leading to an increase in the number of incubators. As public funds are committed to support incubators, it is important that their performance is assessed, and benchmarks developed. This has been a challenge, given the differences in the objectives, business models and outcomes of the incubators. The article reviews the scholarship and practice of Business Incubation.