THE EVOLUTION OF BUSINESS INCUBATION

INTRODUCTION

The genesis, development, and proliferation of business incubators1 are well documented (Allen, 1985; Smilor and Gill, 1986; Campbell et. al., 1988; Hansen et al. 2000). However, fundamental questions pertaining to their origins and evolution as the dominant organizational form for promoting institutional entrepreneurship and stimulating new business formation have not been posed. Twenty years ago, most business incubators did not exist. Yet, today, business incubators continue to increasingly attract significant scholarly and professional attention (Allen, 1985; Smilor and Gill, 1986; Campbell et. al., 1988; Hansen et al. 2000). The creation and implementation of business incubators has generated national and global interest because it reinforced the ideology that the availability, accessibility, and affordability of resources through business incubation2 programs would provide opportunities for entrepreneurial firms and generate many desirable social and economic outcomes. The generalized premise that business incubators would stimulate new business formation, promote economic development, and create social wealth in relatively short time spans attracted a diversity and multiplicity of institutional stakeholders, constituencies, and interest groups, whose roles and contributions financed the birth and growth of the field and legitimated their rise in both public and private domains and across many social and economic sectors. While the spectacular growth in the scale and scope of business incubators might be indicative of the versatility or adaptability of the concept, it also underscores the notion that business incubation means different things to different institutions—governments, academic and research institutions, business and industry, professional, industry, and trade associations, religious institutions, ethnic collectivities, foundations, philanthropists, and civic organizations, etc., and even the United Nations3 which demonstrated their interest by conducting a global study of the business incubation phenomenon (UN Economic Commission for Europe, 2000). The genesis of business incubators was traced to the emergence of initial prototypes in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Batavia Industrial Center4 (BIC), recognized as the first formal business incubator in the country (Adkins 2001; Wolfe et al. 1999; Hughes 2000), was founded in the Finger Lakes region of New York State, in 1959, as the prudent, logical, and practical solution formulated by the town of Batavia to recruit small businesses and stimulate job creation following the termination of a local industrial plant and the resulting economic devastation of the local economy that generated massive fiscal losses and relatively high unemployment. BIC was a social construction and the intellectual and practical justification was predicated on the need to address local economic development challenges. The term "incubator" was coined by Joe Mancuso, a member of the family that owned BIC, as he observed the routine operations of one of the original tenants—"Mount Hope Hatchery" in a scene with thousands of chickens in various positions—on floors, on rafters, laying eggs, prior to processing. Joe Mancuso was so amused at the sight of a poultry farm in an industrial commercial building that he analogized the actual hatching of eggs as identical to his efforts to recruit and grow multiple small businesses and designated BIC, the building, as his incubator (Hughes 2000). Thus, while the term "incubator" was derived from observations of the routine operations of a hatchery,download