Best practice business incubator management research: developing a conceptual framework

This exploratory research identifies and explores the knowledge of best practice management of business incubators in the peer-reviewed literature and establishes its relevance to practicing business incubator managers. As a result, the paper presents a conceptual taxonomic framework that provides strategic context for best practice business incubator management researchers. The research is important because business incubators are considered to be one of the key economic development tools for the modern economy. Amongst other things, they address unemployment, increase enterprise development, help commercialise research, and assist socially disadvantaged groups. Consequently, they are identified as popular choices among policymakers around the world (OECD 1999). Business incubator management, however, is not adequately explained by current management theory because business incubator managers require a specific set of unique skills (Lalkaka and Abetti 1999). With the rapid growth of business incubators around the world (OECD 2001), there is a corresponding increasing demand for business incubator managers needing a specialized set of business management skills and knowledge (Rice and Mathews 1995).