An Evaluation of the Entrepreneurs’ Perception of Business-Incubation Services in Kenya

Abstract

Business incubators provide an important service network for new and fledgling Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Kenya. To ascertain the perception of the importance of business incubation process and how recipients perceive the service to be rendered, perceptions of 124 entrepreneurs are compared. The survey endeavored to cover all types of business-incubation programme in Kenya that target SMEs, but it was found that although close to twenty-five institutions operated some form of business incubation services or another, only twelve were confirmed as business incubators per se. The findings on the entrepreneurs’ respondent, first from the descriptive statistics shows that the mean scores for the importance of services of business-incubation processes is higher than the rating of how actually the services were received. The hypothesis empirically tested using paired t-test indicates that a gap exist between how entrepreneurs’ perceive business-incubation (services) process and what they actually receive. Based on the means of the two, they actually received less than anticipated. However, being a quantitative study the exact details of the real nature of business-incubation- services attached to the importance/ rendered services are not documented in the study. While the research provided new insights into business-incubation services in Kenya, numerous questions ring out in mind.