Motives and Selection Criteria of Social Impact Incubators

Abstract

Due to the large number of new social enterprises (SEs) established in recent years, social impact incubators (SIIs) have emerged globally. SIIs are a meaningful new organizational type of incuba-tor that supports SEs in their early business stages to develop their hybrid objectives. However, research on SIIs is scarce, and little is known about SIIs’ motives and selection criteria. Investi-gating the motives and selection criteria of 71 SII decision makers, we find that SIIs’ main mo-tives are spreading social entrepreneurship, their sense of duty to society, and learning from the innovations of others. Furthermore, using a Choice-based Conjoint experiment, we identify the authenticity of the founding team and the importance of the social problem as SIIs’ most im-portant selection criteria. These results contribute to prior research by showing that SEs are more likely to be supported if they signal social credibility and both idea- and entrepreneur-related cri-teria. We highlight the practical implications for SEs as well as for SIIs.