This pioneering work explores both the theory and practice of business and technology incubation and acceleration over the past six decades as an approach to new venture creation and development. With a global scope, the Handbook examines incubation concepts, models, and mechanisms, providing a research-based analytical foundation from which to understand the emerging role of modern incubators, accelerators, science parks, and related support tools in building modern entrepreneurship ecosystems for promoting targeted economic development. Featuring contributions from internationally renowned scholars and practitioners, the Handbook covers four major themes: understanding incubation and acceleration; incubation mechanisms and entrepreneurship ecosystem development; national and regional incubation policy studies; and incubation practice and assessment. Chapters investigate the expanding importance of newer models and novel modes of new venture support such as smart launching through focused training, mentoring, and financing. This Handbook will help to equip policy makers, facility and program managers, investors, and entrepreneurs with the knowledge to handle support for future business and technology ventures more confidently and effectively. It also provides a deeper understanding of the incubation approach for researchers and scholars of entrepreneurship, innovation, and economic development.

Entrepreneurship is undoubtedly a social process and creating a firm requires both the mobilisation of social networks and the use of social capital. This book addresses the gap that exists between the need to take these factors into consideration and the understanding of how network relationships are developed and transformed across the venturing process. Expert contributions from key scholars in the field illustrate how social networks evolve across entrepreneurial stages, using studies from different regions across the world. Offering a comprehensive understanding, they emphasize the role of formal networks created inside professions and firms. Also examined is the impact of context including both family and internationally variable institutions that can help entrepreneurs to access resources and competencies useful for their projects. The book concludes by emphasizing the various research challenges: which theories are useful for our endeavors and which new methods can be used to understand the dynamics of the venturing process? Dynamic and eminently practical, this book will be invaluable to scholars and students studying the entrepreneurial process and the impact of social networks. It will also prove a useful tool in aiding entrepreneurs to optimize the development of their networks and better manage their entrepreneurial processes. Contributors include: L. Aaboen, M.A. Abebe, A.R. Anderson, M. Brettel, D. Chabaud, H. Chebbi, M. de Beer, S. Drakopoulou Dodd, A. Fayolle, R.T. Harrison, F.M. Hill, S.L. Jack, W. Jansen, W. Lamine, H. Lawton-Smith, C. Lechner, C.M. Leitch, C. Leyronas, F. Lind, S. Loup, A.B.R. Lwango, R. Mauer, S. Mian, G. Mollenhorst, J. Ngijol, S. Qureshi, T. Redd, V. Schutjens, M. Virahsawmy, S. Wu

Today, far-reaching technological developments are making a deep impact on societies and economic environments worldwide. New digital platforms infrastructure (fintech, data analytics, mobility, mobile business apps, nanotech, robotics, new space economy, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, cryptocurrencies, the internet of things, cloud computing and blockchain) are drawing us inexorably into a new globalized digital economy based on knowledge and mobility. In this context of fast-paced change, new creative industries, still in a state of flux, have arisen, while others have disappeared, at least in their traditional form. Moreover, the intermixing of these new technologies has led to a redrawing of boundaries and an increase in their porosity thanks to the links that have developed between the new and the traditional industries. This extends the limits of entrepreneurship out towards new industries but also towards industries with high barriers to entry due to regulatory, technological or structural factors such as space, finance, aeronautics, IT hardware and health industries. For a growing number of people, these new technologies, considered as "external enablers", lead to a democratization of entrepreneurship and a lowering of the barriers to starting up a company by reducing (or eliminating) the difficulties inherent in the entrepreneurial phenomenon in its "classical" configuration, such as high resource intensity, uncertainty, limited time or information asymmetry. This new context, by offering new spaces for the creation, identification and exploitation of business opportunities, clearly extends the range of possibilities for a discipline such as entrepreneurship. In addition, digitalization has helped to break down the boundaries between the different phases of the entrepreneurial process. Few studies in the discipline, however, have examined the impact of these technological disruptions not only using the existing paradigms, but also by re-examining our very conception of the entrepreneurial phenomenon in terms of its evolving nature and shifting contours. The aim of this handbook is that can be used both by academics aiming to familiarize themselves with the state of research and theory within topics and subtopics in digital entrepreneurship, as well as practicing entrepreneurs and managers aiming to familiarize themselves with leading edge practices and insights in digital entrepreneurship.

Technology Entrepreneurship and Business Incubation analyzes business incubators worldwide through a series of empirical and theoretical papers. The authors examine the extent to which business incubators are influential in situations such as nurturing young technology firms, increasing success of new firms, and in developing an ecosystem around these successes. Also examined is the relationship between business incubators and their resource providers, including venture capitalist firms and government agencies.Edited by Phillip Phan (Johns Hopkins Carey Business School), Sarfraz Mian (State University of New York at Oswego), and Wadid Lamine (Toulouse Business School), all leading figures in the field, this book provides both a theoretical framework to conceptualise ideas and a practical guide to influence best practices and innovation in business incubators.