From Entrepreneurial Fission to Entrepreneurial Fusion

Abstract

Incubators are embedded in the culture of the economics of (value-added) services. To date, at least in Europe, they have operated in a manner analogous to the generation of nuclear power; that is, attempting to produce ‘entrepreneurial energy’ through a process of fission that creates a division between the aspiring entrepreneurs' demands for, and the corresponding supply of, support and services. The process has been artificially fuelled by the provision of subsidies and grants from the European Union and elsewhere. However, the outcomes, in terms of high-expectation start-ups and their long-term sustainability, have been mediocre. In contrast, experience in the USA – where the incubation process has been more successful, qualitatively, than in Europe – points to a new route: that of ‘proof of concept’, of which the Kauffman Foundation is the strongest advocate (Mitchell, 2009, p 57). We can use the concept of nuclear fusion – not yet a commercial reality for the generation of power – as a metaphor for the present situation regarding entrepreneurial innovation. On the one hand, there is the failure of incubators and, on the other, the need to expand the incubation process beyond the limits of the business plan, to encompass experimentation and the simulation of new business concepts in an experimental laboratory environment. Such experimental labs are attuned to and conversant with the economics of experimentation. This proposed innovative shift requires the fusion (that is, in the terminology of nuclear physics, production of a single, heavier nucleus) rather than the separation or fission (production of several lighter nuclei), of the demand for and supply of experimentation – of which the services currently provided are only a part.