Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Development: Where not to go!

The two sentences that I very often hear and that scare me the most when I attend conferences on business incubation are “there will never be too many business incubators in the world” and “We want to set up a one-stop-shop for all the entrepreneurs in our region”.   I have heard these two sentences […]

Recipes for disaster: Why entrepreneurship support programs fail?

From a direct observation of our global experiences, we know by now that there are many diverse factors that can impede the successful running of an entrepreneurship support program and that can have a negative effect on its performance in a local context. The ones that follow are some of the most frequent, although by far […]

Business Incubator Communities Of Opportunity

Good ideas endure.  Business incubators were invented over 60 years ago and they continue to serve an increasing number of people and communities around the world.  Today is the 102nd birthday of Joe Mancuso, the creator of the world’s first business incubator.  His simple concept to promote community prosperity by helping entrepreneurs start and grow […]

Focusing On Job Creation In Startups

Time and again I have focused too much of my attention on the number of jobs created in start-ups as a measure of success of any business support organization. In doing so, honestly, I fell short of my professional commitments. Too much importance has been allotted to the numbers of jobs springing from start-up support […]

Startup Survival Rate Into Perspective

In Europe and in the United States, business incubator trade associations, such as EBN and NBIA, calculate that the survival rate of companies created and supported within the incubation industry is a figure between 80 and 90 percent. This figure goes a long way in demonstrating the success of business incubators as organizations capable of […]

What Should We Expect From Social Entrepreneurs?

High hopes We who studied economics, back in the day, were taught many different theories about the role of government in enabling economic development. But the main mantra was that one should leave private economic agents to fend for themselves, and that government should intervene where and when it spotted market failures, to correct the […]

Ditch The Pitch To Support Diversity In Startup Programs

Most accelerators and incubators have a part of their program focused on at least one aspect of pitching. It might be the pitch to get in, it might be training to present to investors, it might be to jump on stage at a demo day. Pitching is come to be part of the “normal” and […]