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Business incubators (BIs) provide entrepreneurs with access to critical resources (for example, physical, financial, knowledge, social, legitimacy, and so on) that support venture development. Little is known about how support needs differ between entrepreneurs pursuing technology-based (TB) and creative-industry (CI) opportunities. Yet these differences may affect their ability to benefit from incubation. This is the first comparative study addressing this gap. Focusing on university BIs, our qualitative analysis reveals that TB entrepreneurs benefit from physical capital supporting proof of concept, financial grants, and technical and industry-specific knowledge capital. In contrast, CI entrepreneurs benefit from physical capital supporting product development, financing of smaller-scale projects, and knowledge capital focused on business basics. External legitimacy was more important to TB entrepreneurs, while internal social capital mattered more to CI entrepreneurs. We draw on value creation and capture to explain these differences. The findings have implications for research and practice concerned with incubation and university-based entrepreneurial support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Entrepreneurial support organizations (ESOs), such as university business incubators, offer tangible and intangible resources to start-ups. Prior research has theorized how these resources create value for entrepreneurs. However, resources are generally studied objectively and as independent dimensions of the incubation process. This qualitative study seeks deeper understanding of how incubation creates value by exploring the subjective lived experience of incubated entrepreneurs. Taking a grounded theorizing approach, we interviewed 44 entrepreneurs involved in ten university incubation programmes in Toronto, Canada. The emergent conceptual model suggests that value is created by the interconnection between tangible and intangible resources. The physical environment (Place) serves as a space for engaging in meaningful interactions among peers, coaches, volunteers and interns (People). Together, they provide an organizational context that fosters embeddedness. The People-Place nexus creates value in three ways: it supports venture development through entrepreneurial learning, which helps the entrepreneur refine the opportunity and start-up the business; it creates community, which fosters collaboration and mutual support for entrepreneurs as they address start-up challenges; and it signals legitimacy to external stakeholders, which facilitates access to resources. Opportunities for future research examining the interrelationship between incubating and embeddedness are suggested. Policy and managerial implications for ESOs are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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We explored how incubated entrepreneurs conceptualize mentoring, and how mentoring affects venture progress. This qualitative study involved semi-structured interviews with 18 entrepreneurs incubated in four Canadian Bis. Interview data was transcribed and analyzed using NVivo software. The conceptual model suggests that the 'fit' between entrepreneur's needs and the provided mentoring services matters to the outcomes of business incubation. Mentoring fit is conceptualized along three dimensions: content, quality, and availability. When fit is high, incubated entrepreneurs learn important lessons directly and vicariously from mentors. But when fit is low, it is inadequate to support social learning and will not have positive effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globally, business incubators and accelerators have been embraced as important mechanisms to support the growth and development of new ventures. Several typologies have been proposed as a means of classifying their alternate forms. Within these typologies university business incubators (UBIs) are often recognized as a separate, but homogeneous class. Yet taking an isomorphic approach fails to acknowledge that differences among UBIs have implications for how they function and how their performance should be evaluated. Performance evaluation is an important issue as universities come under increasing pressure to demonstrate that the public funding they receive in support of their incubation activities is being put to good use. This paper offers a new perspective for the study of UBIs that focuses on their heterogeneity. We develop a framework that posits two competing narratives for UBIs, commercial and educational, that represent extremes on a continuum where hybrid configurations are also possible. Our framework demonstrates that these narratives offer a systematic explanation of differences in UBIs, have implications for performance evaluation, and suggest directions for future research aimed at advancing our understanding of variation in the way UBIs are configured and managed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although never a straightforward task, the 'drawing of lines' between industry boundaries is becoming ever more difficult in today's economy. The blurring of interindustry boundaries has been attributed to such factors as deregulation, globalization, fundamental breakthroughs in science and the strategic importance of information technology. While this explanation certainly has face validity, it falls short of providing a systematic framework for explaining why firms engage in activities that lead to the blurring of inter-industry boundaries and why/how the nature of boundary crossing actions differs between firms. A conceptual model is developed which integrates economic and behavioral perspectives in an effort to address these issues within the context of the telecommunications industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Asia and Latin America are significant emerging economies. While Asian management research has been comprehensively reviewed, the understanding of Latin America management research is fragmented. The authors address this gap by providing the first literature review of Latin America management research. Defining management research broadly (looking across the subfields of international business, strategy, entrepreneurship, organization behavior and human resources, and business ethics), this literature review responds to the call for management researchers to contextualize their research. The article begins by examining the contextual dimensions that make Latin America distinctive. The authors then review Latin America management research and position it within the larger body of emerging economy research. They conclude by presenting a framework and research agenda to guide future efforts at theory development in the Latin American context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although few in number, rapidly growing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) make a disproportionate contribution to employment and wealth creation in the North American economy. Unfortunately, periods of rapid growth are usually short-lived. The strains associated with managing a fast growing venture often produce performance problems. This article explains how these management challenges can be addressed by coupling complex systems thinking with illustrative examples from a series of interviews with CEOs of high growth companies. I identify five management practices that are built on the concept of self-organizing that can help firms cope with the continuous and unpredictable change that characterizes daily life in a fast-growing enterprise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]