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The purpose of this paper is to explain how human resource (HR) managers of incubators can be more effective by applying Relationship focused theory, wherein the HR managers consider the forms of relationships among entrepreneurs. For helping create successful startups, HR managers of incubators can analyze and govern the practice of entrepreneurial action using a relationship-focused (rather than an individual-focused) approach.

A fourfold typology of relationships is used to explain the utility of relationships for practicing entrepreneurial work in an incubator. HR managers of incubators should consider the forms of relationships among the entrepreneurs that they oversee within incubators.

Social and task antecedents determine the ideal relationship between budding entrepreneurs, and incubator climate restrains the link between relationships and entrepreneurial outcomes.

Relationship-focused theory is used to explain the manner in which entrepreneurial action can be organized among budding entrepreneurs within incubators. The focus stays on the ‘relationship’ between budding entrepreneurs housed within incubators.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, discuss and analyse the successful adoption of incubators worldwide; and second, the lessons learned from successful incubators towards the twenty-first century.

The research methodologies adopted in this study are a mixed-methods approach: quantitative (survey) and qualitative (five international case studies).

Incubators contribute to the international economy and play a vital role not only in the economic recovery but also in smart growth and economic development. These findings will assist incubator managers, policy makers and government parties in successful implementation of incubator policies.

This research focuses on specific lessons. More in-depth research may find additional positive traits.

This research will be of benefit to countries establishing business incubators in order to avoid mistakes and increase the likelihood of success.

This paper contributes to the current literate on the best practices worldwide. Furthermore, it presents future perspectives for academicians and practitioners.

Business incubation is an important strategy to foster entrepreneurship and innovation; it has gained enormous popularity in China since the mid‐1990s. The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into the perceived value of business incubators from the perspective of start‐up ventures and draw implications for future incubation programmes in China.

The research was based on a sample of 61 incubator tenants from well‐established business incubators in Shanghai. A questionnaire including Likert‐type scales was developed to collect feedback/comments on incubator services as well as the perceived benefits of the incubation programme.

True to their names, business incubators in China have added practical value to start‐up ventures by providing wide‐ranging services and tangible/intangible benefits via the incubation programme. However, compared to their counterparts in North America and Europe, the Chinese incubators are still deficient in some important aspects; for example, counselling and mentoring services. To achieve better incubation outcomes, it is crucial that the incubator managers be competent, qualified and highly skilled.

Most of the previous studies on the effectiveness of business incubation in China were undertaken using a case‐based approach or focusing on the contributions of the business incubator to local economic development. The findings in such studies cannot be generalized. This paper provides empirical evidence to confirm the previous findings.

Although business incubators are a widely recognized form of entrepreneurial support, this paper aims to challenge the assumption that incubation is necessarily beneficial for early-stage entrepreneurs, and considers cases where, due to variability in the motives and behaviours of entrepreneurs, incubation may be unwarranted or even undesireable.

This study presents a theoretically derived typology of incubated entrepreneurs, based on their entrepreneurial competence and capacity for learning, which asserts that incubation may be unwarranted or even undesireable for three of the four proposed entrepreneur types. Qualitative data from interviews with entrepreneurs and managing directors from 10 business incubators is used to illustrate the existence of these types.

The data provides evidence of entrepreneurial types whose incubation may be counterproductive to the goals and objectives of their host incubators.

Implications for incubator management (intake screening and ongoing monitoring of portfolio) are developed and aimed at improving the outcomes of business incubation for stakeholders.

The paper contributes to the incubation typology literature by challenging a widely held assumption that entrepreneurs have the potential to benefit from incubation and by reconceptualizing incubators as “crucibles” that perform a critical function in distinguishing high-potential entrepreneurs.

In a world where sustainability is a major aim at all socioeconomic levels, social entrepreneurship plays an important role in achieving the goals that have been set. The purpose of this study is to broaden the knowledge of social start-ups, social incubators and founding teams, highlighting the value of each one. The aim is to use quantitative analysis to determine the possible link between social incubators and social start-up success and identify the founding team profile of social start-ups from each sector according to a sector-based ranking.

Bootstrap data envelopment analysis (DEA) was used to calculate the efficiency of social incubators and social start-ups and thus quantify the impact, in terms of increased efficiency, of social incubators on social start-ups. Then, using cross-efficiency methodology, a synthetic index was used to analyse the founding team profile of social start-ups. The study is based on primary data from a survey of Spanish social incubators and social start-ups.

The study provides strong quantitative evidence of the positive effect of social incubators on the development of social start-ups. The size of this effect exceeds the know-how of start-ups. In terms of efficiency gains, this research quantifies the impact of social incubators on this entrepreneurial ecosystem. This impact exceeds 35%. The study also shows that the strongest social start-ups are in the food and information and communication technology (ICT) sectors. The founding teams in these cases have a strong business background, have a high educational level, receive subsidies and express a desire to retain control of the company.

There is an extensive literature dedicated to the analysis of the behaviour and characteristics of traditional incubators, accelerators and start-ups. However, despite the recent rise of social entrepreneurship, studies of social incubators and social start-ups remain scarce. This study provides two novel findings. (1) It shows the importance of creating a social start-up in a context where it receives support throughout all its development stages, providing quantitative insight into the contribution of social incubators and social start-ups. (2) It reveals the profile of founding teams in the highest-ranked business sectors.

The present study focused on an incubator model for the absorption of beginning teachers into the education system. This new model is based on the cooperative approach. The study examined mentoring perceptions among mentors. More specifically, the study investigated how mentors perceive the incubator and how mentors view the support provided to beginning teachers, as well as the contribution mentoring makes to fostering mentors' own sense of efficacy and professional development. These aspects were examined in comparison to the traditional dyadic model.

The study is based on quantitative and qualitative methods. In the quantitative study, 92 mentors working in incubators and 382 mentors working in a traditional dyadic setting responded to a self-report questionnaire. In the qualitative study, 28 mentors who were part of an incubator were interviewed.

The research findings indicate that the incubators create a dual effect of development and constitute a mantle of support that impacts the mentoring process, positions that as a dialogic–communal process and at the same time contributes to the professional development of both the beginning teachers and mentors.

The paper discusses the theoretical and practical contribution of the incubators as a new model for inducting beginning teachers into the profession.

This study aims to outline the influence of various combinations of antecedent conditions for startups being accepted into business incubators in Italy and Romania. The degree to which these conditions affect acceptance is referred to here as the Business Ideas Acceptance Degree (BIAD). The antecedent conditions considered are business idea potential, business plan quality, entrepreneurial team features, business project progress stage, available financial resources, debts of potential incubated companies, commitment to apply for national/EU funds, business area related to incubator mission, proposed technological content level, technological transfer from university/research centres and spin-off of a partner-entity of the incubator.

The methodological toolkit used was mixed: correlation-based analysis (CBA), machine learning (ML) techniques and fsQCA. Principal component analysis enabled the selection of the most representative antecedent conditions from both business incubator samples in Italy and Romania, further used in fsQCA analyses. XGBoost algorithm has been also used. K-Means clustering, an unsupervised learning algorithm that groups unlabeled dataset into different clusters, led to the configuration of two clusters associated to each of the countries involved in this study (Romania and Italy).

The findings reveal the differences between the different antecedent conditions that can contribute to startups being accepted into business incubators in Italy and Romania. The validation of the fsQCA equifinality principle in both samples shows that the selected antecedent conditions, mixed in combinations of “causal recipes”, lead to a high BIAD by business incubators from both countries.

This study reveals the differences between different antecedent conditions, capable to contribute to the start-up acceptance within business incubators from Italy and Romania. Furthermore, the validation of fsQCA equifinality principle in both samples highlight that the selected antecedent conditions, mixed in combinations of causal recipes, lead to a high degree of business ideas' acceptance in business incubators.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between the characteristics of the incubation industry, government funding, and the intensity of funding for different services. Because the incubation industry has particular characteristics, government funding varies for different services, and its intensity varies with service.

Government funding is classified as incubation subsidy and incubation incentive. Besides, incubation services include property management, business mentoring as well as investment and financing. Based on this, this study examines the influence mechanism of different subsidy and incentive on incubation services by using the generalized propensity score matching method.

The empirical results show that subsidy and incentive have an inverse-U shape effect on property management service, but a linear effect on business guidance service. Furthermore, subsidy does not affect investment and financing service, but incentive that can have a significant impact.

The theme of government funding and incubator services plays an important role in helping entrepreneurs expand their businesses. Incubation subsidy and incentive can provide important support to help enterprises obtain more preferential loans, technical services and technical support in the incubator. Applying it to incubator services can provide better technology and entrepreneurship guidance. These services can help new entrepreneurs understand products and markets, and how to develop more successfully in the early stage. In short, incubators supported by government funds can provide important support to entrepreneurs to help them successfully realize their business plans.

The objective of this article is to map and assess current evidence in women's technology entrepreneurship in business incubators with the aim of producing a conceptual framework that will allow us to understand how gender shapes the life of women technology entrepreneurs.

The authors conducted a systematic literature review. The data set comprises 49 publications, including peer-reviewed articles and prominent book chapters. These are first categorized according to their feminist approach and second analysed using an inductive thematic approach to map dominant concepts and research methods.

The authors develop a framework with four dimensions: (1) antecedents, (2) challenges, (3) outcomes and (4) solutions. The authors show that current literature mainly focuses on the challenges faced by women technology entrepreneurs in incubator settings. Although liberal feminist research is present, social feminist perspectives dominate, with poststructuralist research as a close second. Interestingly, current research has not focused much on individual characteristics; in other words, the baggage that women bring with them in terms of prior experiences is hardly investigated, even though there is general agreement that socialization shapes women's experiences of and responses to gender challenges.

The authors contribute to the literature in the following ways: The developed framework assists in understanding how gender is an overarching factor that shapes every facet of the life of a women technology entrepreneur, and how incubator environments intensify gender issues. Indeed, being in an incubator environment adds an extra layer of gendered conditions, thus intensifying the challenges that women meet, creating a “triple masculinity trap”. The review highlights that little is known about how early conditioning shapes women technology entrepreneurs' reactions to the gendered conditions they meet and that there is a lack of research on how women “do entrepreneurship”.

This paper aims to refer to the knowledge transfer of entrepreneurial skills between digital incubators and nascent entrepreneurs. It questions the role of the context and of the richness of the ecosystems in which these women evolve, as defined by Welter and Baker (2021) on such an attempt.

This research is based on a qualitative study that refers to case studies of women nascent entrepreneurs who evolve into two different contexts – one rich zone and one deprived economic one of the French Parisian Region – and who integrated the same digital incubator.

Context does partly matter: besides the “Where”, the “Who” and, moreover, the level of education and previous entrepreneurial experience really matters, and only educated women, whatever the other components of context, seem to be capable to receive the “best” knowledge transfer from incubators. Second, incubators can be considered as to be a knowledge hub that allow knowledge transfer not only from trainers and coaches to women nascent entrepreneurs but also among women entrepreneurs. This paper concludes with a discussion on the role of digital training and coaching in such knowledge transfers.

Findings are limited to a specific place (the region of Paris). Therefore, women entrepreneurs evolve in more different contexts but the national entrepreneurial and institutional context remains the same. There should be need to explore the role of an incubator that evolves into more contrasted contexts.

If results can be generalized, this means incubators should differentiate their services, teaching and coaching expertize according to the education level of nascent entrepreneurs: This is a plaidoyer against institutionalized incubators that claim to be capable of targeting any nascent (women) entrepreneurs.

This study is also a plaidoyer for more digital incubator to mix persons from different contexts, especially to welcome persons from more deprived economic zones.

The research reveals the role of context – and, some components of the context – intro coaching and training that are provided by online incubators. It contributes to the literature on knowledge transfer that is brought about by incubators. It also contributes to the literature in entrepreneurship by showing that some components among the others that define what we call “the context” matter more than others.