Institutional Adaptiveness, Technology Policy & the Diffusion of Incubator Models

Ali J. Ahmad, Dublin City University Business School
Dr. Sarah Ingle, Dublin City University Business School

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Business incubators have been in existence for almost 50 years, and a generally accepted account exists in the academic literature of their development. However, to answer the question, ‘why does business incubation exist as a phenomena?’, there is a need to build a robust theory of business incubation. The primary objective of this paper is, therefore, to contribute towards incubation theory by arguing that the development of business incubation is linked to path-dependent historical processes and nationally embedded institutions. The purpose of this paper is not to track a history of incubation. Instead, taking the US as a case, perspectives from institutional theory are used to contextualize the early years of incubator development and the subsequent diffusion and institutionalization of the incubator-form as a fundamental constituent of the US national technology policy and innovation system. It is argued that the first incubators were setup as responses to specific environmental conditions, notwithstanding the importance of human agency in the process. Subsequent diffusion was facilitated by a number of changes in the US innovation system including: a paradigm shift in economic development policy; improved anti-trust and intellectual property protection; ‘successful’ evaluations of state and private-sector led experimentation with the incubator-model; field-level structuration due to professionalization; and the emergence of an incubator ‘community of practice’. The paper concludes with a number of general propositions and suggestions for further research.

Key Words Business incubator, institutional theory, venture creation, technology policy, incubator evaluation

2008, Belfast

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