Leveraging for success in business incubation by keeping the right focus
By Jill Sawers

In the global drive to create employment opportunities and work for all, as well as an increasing recognition of the role that small companies play in developing much needed innovative products, services and business models, there is increasing recognition of the important role that business incubation programmes can play as intermediaries. Typically business incubators provide both infrastructure support (professional office space; access to shared office facilities like boardrooms, receptionist service, equipment) and appropriate services (strategy and business development; bookkeeping; networking and access to potential clients; access to potential investors/funders).

The South African Government (national and provincial) is investing in business incubators and there are over 20 government supported business incubators in the country (Seda Technology Programme; The Innovation Hub’s Maxum; CITI’s Bandwidth Barn; Durban’s Smart Exchange). In addition there are several successful private owned business incubators (Raizcorp; Aurik). infoDev of the World Bank has a network in excess of 50 incubators in Africa, and has a website dedicated to providing tools to assist business incubators in developing countries (www.idisc.net). The number of new incubators is growing as the importance of this field is recognized.
However, sometimes in the quest and excitement to set up programmes such as these, the REAL metric gets forgotten,

i.e. how do these programmes impact their environments? Have they resulted in:
• more SUSTAINABLE companies entering the economy ;
• impactful and increased numbers of new jobs being created by these companies;
• new products and services successfully introduced to the market?

Successful business incubators are led by individuals who not only understand the important role they have to play, but who run the incubator/incubation programme as a business venture employing the same “good business practices” that they teach to their incubator client businesses – they walk the talk. Too often the focus is short term: on securing funding to ensure the incubator’s own survival and sustainability; on keeping the stakeholder and/or politicians happy etc. Like a business, clients will pay for value addition, and the value addition comes from adding value to the clients of the incubator, the business owner, such that their businesses grow and they deliver on the main objective of the business incubator, vs: becoming sustainable entities that create new jobs, products and services.

Having briefly discussed what makes a successful incubator, the antithesis question is: what causes an incubator to fail? In my mind the “killers” of incubation programmes are those that destroy the entrepreneurial spirit, vs: bureaucratization; employee attitude i.e. “needing a job” rather than “desiring a position to provide value”; lack of environmental support (network of supportive individuals who use their positions to positively impact the programme).

Recognizing the importance of government and private sector involvement in this space (academic sector included as this could be government or private), the question remains as to how can these two cultures be mutually, successfully leveraged to create “incubators with impact”?

BIO of Dr Jill Sawers

Jill is an infoDev (World Bank) consultant providing technical assistance with the development and implementation of business incubators in Tanzania and Mozambique, and women entrepreneurship programmes in Laos and the Caribbean. She runs her own consulting company in the fields of innovation and entrepreneurship development. Her experience includes establishing and running the Maxum Business Incubator at The Innovation Hub Science Park in Pretoria; the development of the CoachLab Student Leadership Development Programme that focuses on producing young leaders for the ICT industry; and the delivery of training to incubator managers, and entrepreneurs respectively. Jill was elected as first Chair of the Southern African Business and Technology Incubation Association. She serves on the Panel of Experts of the East London Industrial Development Zone’s Science Park, as well as on the SAIS (Southern Africa Innovation Support Programme) Steering Committee as the innovation expert. Jill holds a Bachelor of Science degree, a Masters in Business Leadership, and a PhD in Technology Management.

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