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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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