Abstract:

Though the first U.S. business incubator opened in New York in the 1950’s, the concept did not fully evolve until the mid-1980’s, when the Small Business Administration (SBA) began promoting incubator development in a series of conferences, newsletters and handbooks.

Thanks to these efforts, incubator development grew significantly throughout the country. While the spread of incubators in Europe occurred later, the growth has been quite different than in the U.S. For example, the growth of incubators in Spain has been very fragmented, and a national association of incubators supporting the initiative has yet to be implemented.

This paper will analyze the role of the entrepreneurial ecosystem of incubators in the USA and Spain, specifically in the areas of training and relationships to university-driven entrepreneurial support networks.

The key contributing factors to entrepreneurial success are the strengthening of positive synergies and economics of scale of the incubators participants. For this reason, this paper will analyze what percentage of incubator graduates start a business through university-hosted business incubators versus non-university incubators, and what percentage of incubators have agreements to facilitate the installation of businesses post-completion.

Keywords:

Entrepreneurial Ecosystem, University-hosted Business Incubators.