Knowledge acquisition processes during the incubation of new high technology firms

High technology incubators have been funded in universities by the UK government as part of the ‘third mission’ for higher education (DTI 2000a ). The provision of such facilities is premised on the notion that new technology firms achieve success at least in part from the benefits of incubators as...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inInternational entrepreneurship and management journal Vol. 5; no. 4; pp. 481 - 495
Main Authors Warren, Lorraine, Patton, Dean, Bream, David
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Boston Springer US 01.12.2009
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Business and Management
Business incubators
Emerging Markets/Globalization
Entrepreneurship
Knowledge acquisition
Management
Studies
Networks
Entrepreneur
Incubation
Knowledge acquisition
Technology
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Summary:High technology incubators have been funded in universities by the UK government as part of the ‘third mission’ for higher education (DTI 2000a ). The provision of such facilities is premised on the notion that new technology firms achieve success at least in part from the benefits of incubators as rich networked environments where specialist knowledge acquisition can occur. This paper presents a exploration of how this process takes place, based on a case study of the high-tech incubator at the University of Southampton. The paper shows that firm founders adopt different approaches to the networked environment provided by the incubator; in this case the shift from Directorial support to that embedding in external networks was significant as firms grew. Taking account of this process should enable incubator managers to develop practices that ensure firms gain maximum advantage from the available resources.
ISSN:1554-7191
1555-1938
DOI:10.1007/s11365-009-0121-8