scholarly journals Small enterprise development in South Africa: The role of business incubators

2014 ◽  
Vol 26 (26) ◽  
pp. 141-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mukhove Masutha ◽  
Christian M. Rogerson
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Support Services ◽  
Policy Development ◽  
Small Enterprise ◽  
Enterprise Development ◽  
Business Incubators ◽  
Business Incubation ◽  
Institutional Issues ◽  
Start Up

Abstract Business incubation is a relatively new phenomenon in scholarship and policy development for small enterprise development. Business incubators offer targeted business support and technical support services to accelerate the growth of emerging and small start-up business enterprises into financially and operationally independent enterprises. South Africa has adopted business incubation as one vehicle for upgrading the SMME economy. This article examines the evolution of policy towards business incubation, current progress, institutional issues and emerging geographies of business incubators as part of the unfolding and dynamic SMME policy landscape in South Africa. Considerable differences are observed between the activities of the network of state-supported incubators as opposed to private sector operated incubators.

scholarly journals Hatching Prosperity Together: A Dynamic Assessment of Relationships in Business Incubation in New Zealand

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Brock Starnes
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Dynamic Assessment ◽  
Business Incubators ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Business Incubation ◽  
Public Intervention ◽  
Start Up ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Depth Interviews

<p>The concept of business incubators has attracted much attention in recent years, both as descriptive of an increasingly important phenomenon and as an effective public intervention in the economies of lagging cities, regions, and countries. However, little empirical research has explored this phenomenon.  To better understand what type of relationships contribute to the performance of newly hatched business ideas, the following study applies a social capital and proximity lenses to explore relationships in business incubation and how they contribute to start-up performance.  Through the use of open-ended questions this study carried out semi-structured interviews with 25 total participants of the New Zealand incubation system. These in-depth interviews allowed participants to express their perspectives on business incubation.  This study revealed that there are tensions that exist in the incubator environment which are as much about the relationship between the two central participants - incubator personnel and entrepreneur - and other stakeholders, as between the two central participants themselves. These tensions, if not aligned, restrict incubating entrepreneurs from gaining advantage from business incubators. Additionally, the study reveals that the role of geographical proximity in business incubation is surprisingly of less importance than other forms of proximity.</p>

scholarly journals Hatching Prosperity Together: A Dynamic Assessment of Relationships in Business Incubation in New Zealand

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Brock Starnes
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Dynamic Assessment ◽  
Business Incubators ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Business Incubation ◽  
Public Intervention ◽  
Start Up ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Depth Interviews

<p>The concept of business incubators has attracted much attention in recent years, both as descriptive of an increasingly important phenomenon and as an effective public intervention in the economies of lagging cities, regions, and countries. However, little empirical research has explored this phenomenon.  To better understand what type of relationships contribute to the performance of newly hatched business ideas, the following study applies a social capital and proximity lenses to explore relationships in business incubation and how they contribute to start-up performance.  Through the use of open-ended questions this study carried out semi-structured interviews with 25 total participants of the New Zealand incubation system. These in-depth interviews allowed participants to express their perspectives on business incubation.  This study revealed that there are tensions that exist in the incubator environment which are as much about the relationship between the two central participants - incubator personnel and entrepreneur - and other stakeholders, as between the two central participants themselves. These tensions, if not aligned, restrict incubating entrepreneurs from gaining advantage from business incubators. Additionally, the study reveals that the role of geographical proximity in business incubation is surprisingly of less importance than other forms of proximity.</p>

scholarly journals Role of Business Incubators as a Tool for Entrepreneurship Development: The Mediating and Moderating Role of Business Start-Up and Government Regulations

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 1822 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cai Li ◽  
Naveed Ahmed ◽  
Sikandar Ali Qalati ◽  
Asadullah Khan ◽  
Shumaila Naz
Keyword(s):  
Training Programs ◽  
Equation Modeling ◽  
Business Incubators ◽  
Government Regulations ◽  
Entrepreneurship Development ◽  
Entrepreneurial Spirit ◽  
Start Up ◽  
Moderating Role ◽  
And Training

Business incubators create value by combining the entrepreneurial spirit of start-ups with the resources that are typically available to new businesses. It is widely recognized that knowledge-based entrepreneurial companies are the main creators of economic growth, and such enterprises require special business development services. Therefore, the study aims to examine the role of business incubators in providing greater services (networking services, capital support, and training programs) in entrepreneurship development. Secondly, it also examines the mediating and moderating role of business start-up and government regulations for entrepreneurship. Using a quantitative methodology, we examine 567 samples through structural equation modeling. We find that the business incubators are playing an effective mediating role in providing networking services, capital support, and training programs to individuals and entrepreneurs, which are significant for entrepreneurship development, whereas business start-up positively mediates the relationship between networking services, capital support, training programs, and entrepreneurship development. Government regulations for entrepreneurship have a direct effect on entrepreneurship development. More importantly, government regulations for entrepreneurship have a positive moderating effect between business start-up and entrepreneurship development. Our study identifies the critical resources needed to improve the quality of business incubators and to ensure the availability of such resources to improve entrepreneurship development.

COUNSELLING ENTREPRENEURS AS RESOURCES IN REGIONAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

1997 ◽  
Vol 05 (04) ◽  
pp. 447-475 ◽  
Author(s):  
GEOFFREY G. MEREDITH ◽  
DENNIS HOWARD
Keyword(s):  
Regional Development ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Regional Level ◽  
Small Enterprise ◽  
Enterprise Development ◽  
Regional Economic ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Regional Enterprise ◽  
Intense Research

Regional economic or regional enterprise development has been subject to intense research by economists, planners, enterprise specialists and policy specialists for decades. The paper examines various models for regional economic or regional enterprise development and focuses on small towns and communities as an essential component of development. The paper reviews the role of entrepreneurs in enterprise strategies linked to towns and communities and the origins of entrepreneurs and strategies that might be adopted at the regional level to provide support for the entrepreneurial event. The results of a field study of over three hundred Australian regional development centres small enterprise clients, the strategies of those centres impact on entrepreneurs, reveal that the proposed objectives were not achieved and the strategies were in retrospect questionable. The paper concludes with recommended strategies for practitioners and policy makers dedicated to regional development and recognising the role of entrepreneurs in that process.

scholarly journals Business incubators and green technology: The Gauteng Climate Innovation Centre, South Africa

Urbani izziv ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol Supplement (30) ◽  
pp. 212-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maruschka Gonsalves ◽  
Jayne M. Rogerson
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Green Technology ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Business Incubators ◽  
Business Incubator ◽  
Green Technologies ◽  
Start Up ◽  
Learning Through Experience ◽  
Green Economies

Business incubators are a vehicle to assist the survival prospects of start-up enterprises, many of which fail in their early years of operation. One special form of business incubator is the Climate Innovation Centre (CIC) which is part of international debates around green economies and appropriate technologies for climatecompatible development. CICs are an intervention to build innovation sites to ameliorate climate change and a highly distinctive form of business incubator in which the explicit focus is upon supporting small business startups allied to the application of green technologies. Using a qualitative approach the article analyses the establishment and operations of the Gauteng Climate Innovation Centre in South Africa. The CICSA in its first five years of operations has been ‘learning through experience’ and introduced a number of changes since its launch in 2012, including an extension of the business incubation programme and an adjusted focus to South Africa’s climate change related ‘green’ issues around energy, water and waste. Although 5 years is too short for a conclusive evaluation of CIC operations the evidence from this research with South African clean-tech enterprises is largely positive and suggests that the assistance provided by the CIC has contributed towards enterprise development.

scholarly journals Business Incubator and Its Impact on Business Success: A Case Study of Jordan Enterprise Development Corporation (JEDCO)

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 35
Author(s):  
Rula Ali Al-Damen
Keyword(s):  
Support Services ◽  
Analytical Methods ◽  
Business Success ◽  
Enterprise Development ◽  
Business Incubators ◽  
Business Incubator ◽  
Development Corporation ◽  
Support Practices ◽  
High Level

This study aimed to identify the level of services provided by the business incubators and their impact on business success. The sample for the field study consisted of 30 businesses that benefited from business incubator services at Jordan Enterprise Development Corporation (JEDICO). Various techniques, such as descriptive and analytical methods, were utilized in the study to test the hypotheses. The results demonstrated that beneficiaries perceived business incubators&rsquo; support practices as high level and that there was a statistically significant impact of business incubators on business success where the networking support services dimension had the highest influence on business success, followed by infrastructure support services. As a result of the findings, the study has provided a set of recommendations.

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