How coaching services help early stage entrepreneurs: an exploration of gender differences

PurposeEntrepreneurial support organizations, such as business incubators and accelerators (BIAs), provide coaching as a core element of their service offering for startups. Yet little is known about how coaching creates value from the entrepreneur's perspective. This is an important issue given that entrepreneurship is recognized as a gendered phenomenon. The purpose of this article is to explore how the coaching services provided during incubation create value for men and women entrepreneurs.Design/methodology/approachFocusing on university business incubators, our comparative qualitative study of 18 men and women entrepreneurs takes a grounded theorizing approach, and draws abductively on entrepreneurial learning theory, to explore the dimensions of coaching services that support venture development and explain gender differences.FindingsThe emergent explanatory model suggests that venture development is supported by coaching service design (at the incubator level) and by coaching content and rapport (at the entrepreneur-coach dyad level). Gender differences were observed in the emphasis placed on accessibility of coaching services provided by the incubator and the guidance provided by the coaches. We theorize that these findings reflect differences in entrepreneurial learning.Practical implicationsTo better support entrepreneurial learning, gender differences should be considered in both the design and delivery of coaching services.Originality/valueOur findings provide deeper insight about how coaching services create value for entrepreneurs by revealing explanatory dimensions at two levels of analysis and theorizing the interrelationship between entrepreneurial learning, gender and venture development.

Which factors affect the performance of technology business incubators in China? An entrepreneurial ecosystem perspective

To examine which factors affect the performance of technology business incubators in China, the present study proposes an entrepreneurial ecosystem framework with four key areas, i.e., people, technology, capital, and infrastructure. We then assess this framework using a three-year panel data set of 857 national-level technology business incubators in 33 major cities from 28 provinces in China, from 2015 to 2017. We utilize factor analysis to downsize dozens of characteristics of these technology business incubators into seven factors related to the four proposed areas. Panel regression model results show that four of the seven factors related to three areas of the entrepreneurial ecosystem, namely people, technology, and capital areas, have statistically significant associations with an incubator’s performance when applied to the overall national data set. Further, seven factors related to all four areas have various statistically significant associations with an incubator’s performance in five major regional data set. In particular, a technology related factor has a consistently statistically significant association with the performance of the incubator in both national model and the five regional models, as we expected.

THE EFFORT OF ABCGM TO ESTABLISH BUSINESS CULTURE IN WEST JAVA UNIVERSITIES THROUGH BUSINESS INCUBATOR

Indonesia is a developing country in Asia, whose economic development still depends on foreign investment. MSME is an alternative business unit that can encourage domestic economic growth that can be released from the dependence of foreign investment. The low number of MSMEs compared to other countries in Asia and the vulnerability of MSMEs unable to compete in the market in the era of globalization. Make the government fund various stakeholders to be established and develop business incubators, including universities. With the adoption of this policy, universities in West Java began to create and build business incubators. This article is intended to describe the process of establishing and developing a university business incubator in West Java. The method used in this research is qualitative research with data collection techniques through data observation and literature study. The results of the study that discussed the establishment of a university business incubator in West Java were carried out in collaboration with lecturers with international non-profit organizations.

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

<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>

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

<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>