Corporate Incubators: Industrial R&D and What Universities can Learn from them

Barbara Becker () and Oliver Gassmann ()

The Journal of Technology Transfer, 2006, vol. 31, issue 4, 469-483

Abstract: The explosive growth of incubation has seen a concurrent and significant increase in research on and knowledge of the incubation phenomenon. However, instead of comprehensively differentiating between non-profit and for-profit incubators, research has described a whole array of partly overlapping archetypes, thus missing out on important aspects. This article first offers two arguments validating a framework of what non-profit university incubators can learn from for-profit corporate incubators before presenting the framework itself. While corporate incubators are for-profit organizations with which to enhance a corporation’s technology development, university incubators try to leverage technological insights from the university in a similar manner. In accordance with their respective missions, organizational structures, incubator processes and resource flows, it is possible to transfer lessons learned from two corporate incubator archetypes—the fast-profit incubator and leveraging incubator—to the world of university incubator. Our empirical findings are based on in-depth case studies of 25 companies through 52 semi-structured interviews with managers of corporate incubators of large technology-intensive corporations in Europe and the U.S., two EU incubator benchmarking surveys and five interviews with the heads of technology transfer offices of two top technology universities. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2006

Keywords: American and European Incubators; industrial R & D; industry spin-offs; venturing; innovation; O31; O32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jtecht:v:31:y:2006:i:4:p:469-483

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DOI: 10.1007/s10961-006-0008-6

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The Journal of Technology Transfer is currently edited by Albert N. Link, Donald S. Siegel, Barry Bozeman and Simon Mosey

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