Abstract
The focus in this paper is to study whether business incubation can provide entrepreneurial start-ups with critical network resources. We make a distinction between incubator-provided network resources and start-ups’ “own” external network resources that are unrelated to the incubator context. Although there has been an increasing number of studies examining incubated entrepreneurs’ network resources, to our knowledge, this is the first study that explicitly compares incubator-provided network resources and start-ups’ own external network resources. Analyzing the results from qualitative interviews with start-up tenants at a technology incubator in Bergen, Norway, we find that network resources acquired by the start-ups’ own efforts (rather than network resources facilitated by an incubator) were most critical in all phases of enterprise development. They played a crucial role in terms of idiosyncratic (non-generic) knowledge generation as drivers of innovation, catalysts for financial contributors, and as a means to organizational reputation and market access. Nevertheless, internal networking with other incubator firms and external network resources facilitated by the incubator were also helpful and complementary, but they were more generic in nature and provided limited idiosyncratic resources. We also found that incubator network resources tend to have traits similar to those of identity-based network resources because they are not mainly governed by economic interests, but at the same time, they are not path-dependent. Inter-tenant network resources, therefore, can have nonbinding weak-ties properties and provide non-redundant information.
Highlights
The focus in this paper is to study whether business incubation can provide entrepreneurial start-ups with critical network resources
We explain the internal networking within the incubator; we focus on extended network resources facilitated by the incubator management
Incubator firms’ “private” external network resources The majority of the entrepreneurs had acquired diverse network resources through education or work experience, which proved valuable for their ventures in their critical start-up phase
Summary
The focus in this paper is to study whether business incubation can provide entrepreneurial start-ups with critical network resources. A business incubator is defined as a more or less formalized entity with an infrastructure intended to nurture incubated start-ups with critical resources in the pursuit of survival and growth (partly derived from Allen and Rahman 1985). Business incubation can provide the start-ups with resources such as office space, counseling, and other basic services, but their purpose is to stimulate internal networking and exchange of knowledge between entrepreneurial start-up firms (Hansen et al 2000; Hughes et al 2007; Sá and Lee 2012; Kitagawa and Robertson 2012). Entrepreneurs can use network resources to generate or test ideas, develop new technology, identify market opportunities (Chen and Wang 2008; Sullivan and Marvel 2011), obtain access to financial funding, and gain legitimacy (Pettersen and Tobiassen 2012), to mention a few benefits
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