Stand Alone or Continue to Support: Exploring the Need for Post Incubation Services for New and Growing Enterprises.

Abstract

Public support for entrepreneurship varies across countries and depends on issues such as sector, regional location and stage of the start-up. In making it easier for people to set up a business, many countries provide access to finance, training and advice. Business incubation (BI) centres are one such model of support for entrepreneurship. The current research provides some preliminary insights into the extent of the demand for post-incubation services in supporting new ventures to thrive and survive. Employing a unique data set based on information gathered from business incubation centre managers, current and alumni clients, we adopted an exploratory research method to contribute to knowledge on potential demand for post-incubation services in supporting new ventures to grow and scale beyond the on-site incubation phase. The findings contribute to the literature for and need to provide tailored services in the post-incubation phase. A gap that emerged from this research is the transition phase from graduating from a formal programme the next stage of business development, often without the continued business development support and government funding provision. Additional supports or scaffolding in this pre-revenue phase is sought by firms.