Science and Public Policy, volume 29, number 2, April 2002, pages 115–128, Beech Tree Publishing, 10 Watford
Close, Guildford, Surrey GU1 2EP, England
Business incubators
Incubation of incubators: innovation as a triple
helix of university–industry–government
networks
Henry Etzkowitz
The shift of university–industry linkages from a
linear to an interactive innovation model is visi-
ble especially in the history of the university
business incubator. Transcending the production
and dissemination of research, incubated know-
ledge increasingly lies behind new products and
new firms. Incubators have developed technology
and business ideas into an array of firms and to
form research centers by fusing heterogeneous
R&D entities from university, government and
industry. Further transformation of university–
industry linkages are in the parallel evolution of
incubator from an isolated to a networked entity.
As these developments are supported by changes
in the regulatory environment and by govern-
ment funding programs, this pairing becomes
university–industry–government interactions.
Henry Etzkowitz is at the Science Policy Institute, State Univer-
sity of New York at Purchase, 735 Anderson Hill Road, Pu r-
chase, NY 10577-1400; E-mail: Henryetzkowitz@earthlink.net.
An earlier version of this paper was presented to the plenary
session of the World Conference on Business Incubation,
Wednesday, 24 October 2001 in Rio de Janeiro. The author
wishes to express appreciation to the Center for Business and
Policy Studies (SNS) Stockholm, the National Research
Council (CNPq) Brazil and the Ministry of Science and Tech-
nology, Honduras for support of SPI’s Incubation, Innovation
and Entrepreneurship project. The author is grateful to Eugene
Schuler Jr. and to the anonymous reviewer.
Science and Public Policy April 2002 0302-3427/02/020115-14 US$08.00  Beech Tree Publishing 2002
U NIVERSITY-BASED INCUBATION, as-
sisting the growth of spin-off firms through a
dedicated facility providing subsidized
space, consultation and other help to encourage
entrepreneurship is a worldwide phenomenon.
Originating in the USA at Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute (RPI) as an explicit organizational format
two decades ago, the concept has since spread to
Latin America, Europe, Asia, Australia and Africa
(Rice and Matthews, 1995; see also Kalis, 2001).
Nevertheless, incubation has developed according to
distinctive trajectories. There has been a focus on
reverse engineering and adapting imported technol-
ogy in Eastern Europe, spin-offs from faculty
research in the USA and an emphasis on student-
organized firms in Sweden.
Incubator development varies according to aca-
demic and regional conditions. Although the overall
trend is positive, incubators have been established at
different rates in different countries, growing espe-
cially rapidly in China and Brazil. For example, in
the early 1990s, Rio de Janeiro and New York City
each had two university-based incubator facilities,
currently Rio has ten and New York three, although
additional facilities are projected. One hypothesis to
explain this difference is that New York’s universi-
ties are highly competitive with one another in con-
trast to Rio de Janeiro where the leading universities
collaborate in assisting newer, smaller universities to
develop their incubator facilities.
The explanation of alternative outcomes can be
sought in the analysis of: (1) the embedding of an
incubator in the research or teaching mission of the
115
Incubation of incubators
Henry Etzkowitz is Director of the Science Policy Institute of
the State University of New York and Associate Professor of
Sociology at Purchase College. Recent books are MIT and
the Rise of Entrepreneurial Science (Routledge, 2002); Pub-
lic Venture Capital: Sources of Government Funding for
Technology Entrepreneurs (with M Gulbrandsen and J Levitt)
(Aspen/Kluwer, 2001, 2nd edition) and Athena Unbound: The
Advancement of Women in Science and Technology (with C
Kemelgor and B Uzzi) (Cambridge University Press, 2000).
He is co-founder (with L Leydesdorff) of the ‘triple helix’ uni-
versity–industry–government conferences (Amsterdam,
1996; New York, 1998; Rio de Janeiro, 2000; Copenhagen,
2002) [www.triplehelix.dk].
university, or both; (2) whether an incubator is
solely dependent upon its own university or is part
of a network across academia, industry and govern-
ment, at various levels; and (3) the relative presence
or absence of incubation support services, including
public and private start-up financing, in the local
innovation environment.
Is it in the nature of knowledge that this phe-
nomenon of knowledge-based economic develop-
ment must happen? Or is it in the nature of business?
Is it the result of rational economic choices? Or is it
the culture of the academy? In this article, I shall
argue that incubation is part of the bi-evolution of
the university, an enlargement in mission and focus.
It exemplifie s the expansion of academic objectives
to incorporate a ‘third mission’ of economic and so-
cial development. It also involves a shift in focus,
from individuals to organizations, in the teaching
function of the university. Finally, the development
of incubation represents a transformation from a lin-
ear, and reverse-linear, to an interactive model of
innovation.
Impetuses and barriers to incubation
Incubation is an exemplar of the triple helix model
of university–industry–government relations. From
divergent starting points in different parts of the
world, there is a movement toward university–
industry–government networks aimed at the incuba-
tion of new enterprises. The model, which has at its
core a university as a source of new technologies
and firms, had its origins at MIT (Massachusetts
Institute of Technology) and Stanford in the early
20th century (Etzkowitz, 2002). The former exem-
plifies incubation as a strategy to revive a declining
industrial region; the latter an instance of developing
a ‘green field’ site, a region largely lacking in
industry.
Ideally, the incubator is part of a broader strategy
of academic and regional co-development and a web
of informal and formal university–industry ties.
Such ties can be initiated through creation of a for-
mal structure, such as an incubator or a liaison of-
fice, or may arise from continuing relationships
between professors and former students. In either
116
case, the most productive regime of university–
industry relations will comprise both elements.
Frederick Terman, the proponent of a joint aca-
demic and regional development strategy at Stanford
from the 1930s to the 1960s, also played a key role
in introducing an entrepreneurial academic model to
developing countries. As a consultant, from the
1950s to the 1970s, he encouraged the foundation of
the Indian Institute of Technology and the Korean
Institute for Advanced Studies (KAIST), resulting in
the creation of flourishing software and hardware
industries in those countries (Leslie and Kargon,
1996; see also Krishna, 2001).
Technology transfer thus becomes a two-way
flow South/North, from developing to developed
countries, as well as North/South, which was for-
merly the sole format of the colonial era. High-tech
regions in advanced industrial countries may also
decline when an early lead is not built upon. Another
Terman report, commissioned by the State of New
York in the late 1960s, had mixed results. The or i-
gins of the state-sponsored Centers for Advanced
Technology, initially at RPI and then at other
schools can be traced to the report.
Nevertheless, the advice to focus New York
City’s diverse centers of technological education
was not heeded, the centrifugal forces of competi-
tion among universities was simply too strong. New
York City, which had been one of three centers of
high technology, along with Berlin and Paris, lost
this distinction. The growth of multi-media and
software firms in the 1990s largely served existing
industries; Silicon Alley lacked sufficient ability to
generate new products and growth firms, which
some attribute to the deficit in university–industry
links.
The paucity of such ties is partly a result of the
lack of a critical mass of technical higher education
sometimes expressed in the statement, “New York
has no MIT.”1 In response to this gap, various pro-
posals have been made over the past 30 years to
merge or create a ‘virtual MIT’ from the various
technical academic institutions in New York City
(Etzkowitz, 2001). The failure of these proposals is
indicative of the centrifugal forces in the New York
regional innovation environment that make collabo-
rative initiatives difficult.
By contrast in Austin, Texas a single leading
university has been able to gain state-government
and industry support to foster knowledge-based eco-
nomic development. This has made initiatives, such
as the formation of an Austin Software Council,
which is currently expanding its purview to become
a High Tech Council for the region, easier to ac-
complish.
The entrepreneurial university
Incubation is part of a global model for the man-
agement of knowledge and technology in regional
Science and Public Policy April 2002

development, with the university as an entrepreneur.
The university has potentially flexible resources,
giving it the ability to take on new missions, espe-
cially in times of crisis. For example, US universi-
ties took the initiative during the Second World War
to take on military R&D responsibilities, even
though the major R&D centers at the time were lo-
cated in industry. In Brazil, when resources were no
longer available for large-scale technology proje cts
such as science parks, universities took up the slack
during the 1980s by founding incubators.
The university is a natural incubator that some-
times plays an informal entrepreneurial role in the
incubation of companies. When communications
systems broke down in Zambia during the past dec-
ade, the Computer Center at the University of Zam-
bia extended the university’s modest internal
computer network across the country, leading to the
foundation of ZAMNET, an independent internet
service provider (ISP) (Konde, 2001).
Firm-formation from academic institutions has
been systematized from a series of individual entre-
preneurial initiatives into an organizationally refined
method of economic and social development. This
metamorphosis began with the invention of the ven-
ture capital firm in the early post war, based upon a
pre-war university–industry–government collabora-
tion in New England, to fill gaps in the region’s
innovation environment.
During the post-war period there were more ex-
amples of university-based start-ups, especially near
MIT and Stanford. Other technical universities, such
as RPI in Troy, New York, combining a strategy of
academic and regional development, wished to be-
come involved and imported the incubator concept
from industry for this purpose. Institutions in each
sector (academy, government and industry) play
hybridized roles that seem to move them away from
classical understandings of each, for instance,
entrepreneurial academics, academic industrialists,
business strategy in government, and so on. The in-
cubators are institutions that encourage and provide
a home for these hybridized roles.
Transcending a simple production function for
translating R&D inputs into outputs (Stiglitz, 1994,
page 148), the powers of knowledge, located in uni-
versities and research institutes, change the agenda
for economic development policy especially at the
regional level. Conversely, the exercise of power,
through governmental bodies at the multinational,
national and regional levels and also through organi-
zations that bring together academic, industrial and
government actors, especially at the regional level,
encourages knowledge producers to think in terms of
use often indirectly through funding incentives and
new intellectual property regimes, and redirects the
production of knowledge to new ends even as such
groups expand support for knowledge production.
The interactive two-way flow between industry,
government and academia in computer science, ma-
terials science and molecular biology is not well
Science and Public Policy April 2002
Incubation of incubators
captured by the ‘endless frontier’ model of a linear
flow from basic to applied research to production.
Whether countries started from the model of the
state incorporating industry and academia or a con-
figuration in which they coexisted separately, the
different helices have recently been moving in a
common direction, overlapping each other, to stimu-
late both competition and collaboration.
Triple helix model
Society is more complex than biology. A ‘double
helix’ was sufficient to model DNA. A ‘triple helix’
is required to model university–industry–
government interactions. The triple helix comprises
universities and other knowledge-producing institu-
tions; industry, including high-tech start-ups and
multinational corporations; and government at vari-
ous levels. While industry and government have
traditionally been conceptualized as primary institu-
tional spheres, what is new in the triple helix model
is that the university is posited to be a leading sphere
along with industry and government.
The partial overlap among university, industry
and government differs from situations in which the
state encompasses industry and the university, for
example, the former Soviet Union, and some Euro-
pean and Latin American countries, in a previous era
when state -owned industries were predominant. The
triple helix model is also different from separate in-
stitutional spheres, for example, how the USA is
supposed to work, at least in theory, as a laissez-
faire society. From either of these starting points,
institutional spheres are ‘taking the role of the
other,’ spinning-off hybrid organizations and actions
such as the incubator movement, embodying ele-
ments of the triple helix (see Figure 1).
Method and propositions
This article draws its data from a convenience sam-
ple of more than 100 in-depth interviews and focus
groups conducted with Incubator directors, start-up
firm founders and members, professors, students,
While industry and government have
traditionally been conceptualized as
primary institutional spheres, what is
new in the triple helix model is that the
university is posited to be a leading
sphere along with industry and
government
117
Incubation of incubators
Triple helix model Laissez-faire model
Tri-lateral networks and
hybrid organizations
State
Academia
Academia
State Industry
Figure 1. From etatistic to triple helix model
industrialists and policy makers. The interviews
were conducted by the author during the past decade
in the USA, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela,
Honduras, Japan, Singapore, Sweden, Denmark,
Norway, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, the
United Kingdom, Italy and France. However, as
country visits progressed, the sample stratified itself
according to the following dimensions: universities
focused on research versus teaching; etatistic versus
laissez-faire innovation environments; developing
versus advanced industrial countries. Archival re-
search at MIT, Stanford and RPI provided additional
data.
Our sample allows us to treat such issues as: dif-
ferences in the nature, role and dynamics of incuba-
tion efforts in developing countries, such as Brazil
and Mexico and those in developed countries, such
as Sweden and the USA; similarities and differences
among universities that are refracted into different
modes of incubation. In some respects the processes
of knowledge-based economic development any-
where in the world also reflect basic patterns, arising
in part from the transfer of a common organizational
innovation, the incubator.
The incubator format is also reinterpreted and
re-invented to respond to local conditions, opportu-
nities and problems. The flexibility of the incubator
model has allowed its adaptation to the problems of
low-tech as well as high-tech firms, the formation of
cooperatives as well as corporations, linear exten-
sion of academic research and reverse linear impor-
tation of industrial problems and business concepts
into academia.
The principles of incubation in a triple helix of
university–industry relations can be expressed in the
following propositions:
• The development of science and technology is
increasingly embedded in the triadic relationship
of university, industry and government.
• Institutions in each sector (academy, government
and industry) play hybridized roles that move
them away from classical understandings of the
sector, for instance, entrepreneurial academics,
academic industrialists, and business strategy in
government.
118
Etatistic model
State
Industry Academia
Industry
• Incubators are organizations that internalize the
triadic relationship, and encourage and provide a
home for these hybridized roles.
• Networking at various levels, among incubator
firms, incubators and institutional spheres have
the potential to enhance the rate of innovation and
inventive activity, both technological and organ-
izational.
• High-tech innovation is universalized as develop-
ing countries with the ability to develop human
capital in niche areas are able to translate these
competencies into internationally competitive
technologies and firms.
• University entrepreneurship programs and incuba-
tor facilities have the potential to turn technology
transfer from a linear North/South flow into an
interactive process.
• Incubation exemplifies the emergence of a triple
helix science, technology and innovation policy.
Origins of incubation
Incubators arose from a confluence of public and
private interests, with a common goal of systematiz-
ing the transition from invention to commercializa-
tion of new technology. The sources include
inventors seeking to develop their ideas, corpora-
tions seeking to spin-off technologies not directly
related to their core competencies and universities
seeking to contribute to the development of their
regions. The idea came about to organize the
The contemporary university business
incubator is part of a complex of
organizational innovations targeted
at the application of science to
invention and of finance to the
commercialization of research
Science and Public Policy April 2002

development of the firms from the university more
systematically through development of the univer-
sity incubator, based upon industry precursors.
As a support structure to nurture the growth of
technology firms, the contemporary university bus i-
ness incubator is part of a complex of organizational
innovations targeted at the application of science to
invention and of finance to the commercialization of
research. These include the invention of the indus-
trial research laboratory in the late 19th century, the
technology transfer unit in the early 20th century,
the venture capital firm in the early post-war. The
origins of the incubator as an organizational entity
can be traced to Thomas Alva Edison’s efforts to
systematize the invention and commercialization of
technology.
The proto -incubator: Edison’s ‘invention factory’
Thomas Alva Edison’s ‘invention factory,’ founded
in the late 19th century, widely recognized as the
precursor of the industrial research laboratory, may
also be seen as the prototype of the incubator facil-
ity. Edison created his invention factory long before
the term ‘incubator’ was applied to an organization
designed to nurture the growth of high-technology
firms, but his organization may appropriately be
viewed in terms of the incubation process.
More than a support structure supplying research
and technology to meet the needs of an existing
firm, Edison’s operation regularly and successfully
created new businesses and industries such as film
and sound recording but also failed in developing
new techniques and firms to process iron ore. Edi
son brought together technologists, scientists and
support staff, into a single organization, to system-
atically design and patent a series of core technolo-
gies and develop spin-off firms to bring them to
market.
The proto-incubator revolved around the techno-
logical vision of a single person who envisioned
technological and business opportunities and then
designed technical and organizational solutions to
fill them, such as the electric light system (Israel,
1998). The General Electric Corporation (GE), in
various national formats, was founded to supply the
needs of this new technological complex and expand
upon it through its research efforts. It is perhaps not
an accident that GE became one of the originators of
corporate incubation in recent decades. In the late
19th and early 20th century, it was largely the efforts
of Edison and his colleagues that made the New
York metropolitan region one of the three leading
high-tech centers of the world at that time.
The early venture capital firm
The second stage in the development of the incuba-
tor concept was the invention of the venture capital
firm in New England during the 1930s and 1940s.
The concept arose from an analyses made of the
Science and Public Policy April 2002
Incubation of incubators
region’s strengths and weaknesses by the New
England Council, an organization that drew together
the regions’ university–industry–government leader-
ship during the 1920s and 1930s to explore initia-
tives for economic and social development. After
considering and discarding existing regional devel-
opment models such as reducing taxes and attracting
branch plants of national corporations, the Council
accepted MIT President Karl Compton’s proposal to
build upon the regions’ research strengths in its col-
leges and universities by creating a new type of
organization to assist firm-formation.
The original model of the venture capital firm,
American Research and Development (ARD)
founded in 1946, created a support structure for the
early stages of firm development. ARD created a
systematic search mechanism to identify technology
with commercial potential. The early venture capital
firm assisted potential firm founders by encouraging
them to become entrepreneurs and by providing fi-
nancial capital and business advice. In contrast to the
Invention Factory model based on the technical and
business vision of a single individual, the venture
firm was designed to attract and winnow the tech-
nology ideas of a large number of persons.
ARD operated as a virtual incubator, attracting,
selecting and supporting ideas for new technology
businesses. ARD sometimes used available space at
MIT to locate firms. As the venture industry grew,
its focus shifted from the provision of seed capital to
financing the later stages of firm-formation.
The intrapreneurial incubator
The third phase in the development of the incubator
concept is an extension of the corporate R&D or
development lab. Some projects that were consid-
ered ‘far out’ or that had potential for the develop-
ment of new business or that were not directly
related to the firm’s existing activities were removed
from the lab. They were relocated to a separate space
or unit where their champions could be given greater
leeway outside the regular organizational chain of
command. These undercover corporate R&D sites
were sometimes called ‘skunkworks.’
Originally the name for a home for an advanced
aerospace project, companies such as Control Data
and General Electric took the skunkworks concept a
step further and established internal incubator facili-
ties to encourage development of new technologies
not necessarily related to the core business of the
firm. Corporate employees could retain their jobs
while forming a new firm, returning to their previous
job without great risk, if necessary. However, when
the corporation came under economic pressure, ac-
tivities that did not contribute directly to the bottom
line were often closed down.
Corporate incubation has been an episodic process
that nevertheless continually reappears, especially
when a firm finds that it needs to be more flexible or
requires additional income from its R&D. Some
119
Incubation of incubators
large firms, for example Xerox, have recently made
incubation into a recognized profit center.
The private incubator
In recent years, incubators have been established as
independent firms or as spin-offs of venture capital
firms. The private incubator, such as Idealab or
Launchpad 39, is typically initiated by an entrepre-
neur, or group of entrepreneurs, and is tightly focused
on a particular technology theme, such as the Inter-
net, with the goal of developing a stable of closely
related firms (Hansen et al, 2000). The private incu-
bator supplies capital as well as business and support
services to entrepreneurs to grow their firms; it works
off a common business model of firm-formation to
guide its entrepreneurs. The private incubator may
even provide the business concept and, in effect, ‘hire
an entrepreneur’ to make it into a firm.
The private incubator represents a partial return
both to Edison’s original model and the early ven-
ture capital firm. Since the incubator supplies
capital, it takes equity on this basis as well as for
assistance with firm development. The private incu-
bator brings the incubator model full circle to Edi-
son’s concept of spinning-off firms from a related
set of technologies, and to the early venture firm
model of providing extensive business and financial
assistance. Private incubators have been called ‘net-
worked incubators’ since they tend to emphasize
synergies among resident firms and even form firms
for this purpose.
The university business incubator
Firm-formation from academic research began to be
systematized through the invention of the venture
capital firm, which served as a proto-incubator dur-
ing the early post war. Nevertheless, academic incu-
bation has a long pre-history. Firm-formation from
academic research occurred in the 17th century from
pharmaceutical research at German universities and
in the late 19th century from chemical research, also
in Germany. In the USA, firm-formation occurred in
the late 19th century around Harvard and MIT in
scientific instrumentation. By the 1920s and 1930s,
radio and electronics firms were formed at MIT and
Stanford, which eventually became the basis for re-
gional clusters.
Karl Compton and Frederick Terman pointed to
the potential of this phenomenon as a regional de-
velopment model. Compton, as President of MIT
during the 1930s and 1940s, and Terman as Provost
of Stanford, during the 1950s and 1960s, stimulated
firm-formation from academia. By encouraging an
entrepreneurial ethos and legitimizing the practice of
firm-formation, the entire university, in effect, be-
came a quasi-incubator. As a Stanford faculty mem-
ber put it, “It was not a sin to form a firm” at a time
when it was looked askance at or virtually prohibited
at other universities.
120
Universities that wanted to initiate an entrepre-
neurial tradition imported the incubator concept
from industry to stimulate firm-formation. The pro-
totypical instance is the relationship of General Ele c-
tric Laboratory in Schenectady to RPI in nearby
Troy, New York. Until the recent departure of the
firm from the region, a symbiotic relationship
existed between GE and the university, characterized
by a steady flow of lab personnel into senior
positions, including the presidency of RPI.
Corporate R&D personnel, such as Pier Abetti,
who transferred to RPI to become faculty members
brought with them the incubator model of assisted
firm-formation. Former GE incubator officials who
became university technology transfer officers, for
example, Pat Hession, at SUNY Stony Brook, were
carriers of the incubator model to other universities.
The technology transfer office spread from academia
to government and firm laboratories; organized in-
cubation moved in the opposite direction.
Contemporary incubator model
The contemporary university incubator revives the
classic venture capital model, combining financing
and mentoring of newly founded high-technology
firms, originated by ARD in the early post-war. The
incubator adds value to the original venture capital
model by locating various firm-formation activities,
often along related technology themes, in a common
physical space where cross-fertilization among com-
panies can more easily take place. By reconnecting
the incubator model to a venture capital process,
new enterprises can systematically be created from
various sources including, but not limited to,
academic, industrial and government research
laboratories.
The premise of the incubator is that firm-
formation can be improved by organizing it as an
educational process, with formal and informal
aspects. By bringing together various elements to
improve firm-formation in a common setting, the
goal is to increase the chances for success of new
enterprises. During the past three decades, the incu-
bator concept of assisted firm development has been
applied in various ways to: resolve problems of
firm-formation from early-stage technology; raise
the technological level of existing firms; and create
jobs in distressed regions.
Firms may also be incubated from new business
models created by entrepreneurs and academics and
from incremental innovations develo ped within the
non-research parts of existing firms. As a support
structure for entrepreneurship, incubation is the logi-
cal next step after entrepreneurial education, even
though historically it has typically come first, with
an educational process added on later.
There are approximately 3,000 incubator facilities
worldwide of varying scale and scope (International
Association of Science Parks, 2002. 3 One of the
Science and Public Policy April 2002

fastest growing incubator movements is in China,
where large-scale state -supported incubators typi-
cally grow several dozen high-tech firms simultane-
ously (Lalkaka, 2000). The incubator movement
with perhaps the broadest scope is in Brazil, where
several types of incubators have been invented to
mentor low-technology firms, cooperatives and non-
governmental organizations (NGO’s) as well as high
tech firms.
Although incubation occurs in a variety of set-
tings to achieve a number of objectives, the basic
elements of the incubator model include:
• a selection process, encouraging the improvement
of the nascent business or organizational idea;
• subsidized space, available for a limited period of
time;
• shared services, allowing support activities to be
outsourced;
• mentoring, education in best practices; and
• networking, introduction to potential partners and
investors.
• To these basic components, may be added venture
capital, a financial mechanism to seed-fund new
technology firms.
Norms of incubation
These elements are present to various degrees in any
actual incubator facility or virtual incubator pro-
gram. The incubator is a flexible model that can be
creatively adapted to the needs of countries and re-
gions at different levels of technology and business
development. Incubation includes the following
principles and practices which may be formulated as
norms (a) and counter-norms (b) :
1a. A selection process for admission to the incuba-
tor that encourages entrepreneurs to formulate
their business ideas carefully for evaluation by
committees of business and technical experts.
The application and decision-making process by
which new enterprises are accepted into the in-
cubator is important in identifying firms with
potential for growth and other relevant criteria of
success.
1b. On the other hand, some incubators operate ac-
cording to the principle that, ‘the entrepreneur
knows best.’ If the business concept sounds sen-
sible, if space is available and they can afford to
pay the rent, admission is granted.
2a. Location in a common venue so that entrepre-
neurs can interact and learn from each other
informally as they organize their firms.
2b. Virtual incubators may host meetings to en-
courage ‘learning’ among firms and clubs of
graduated firms may be organized to continue
this process once firms have left the incubator.
3a. An experienced entrepreneur as director who can
mentor the founders of new firms. Ideally, the
Science and Public Policy April 2002
Incubation of incubators
director should be familiar with the business, fi-
nancial, labor and technical communities in a
region and be able to link firm founders with ex-
ternal resources.
3b. It is not unusual, however, for incubator direc-
tors to be drawn from the ranks of academia or
support staff, to learn on the job, and, if they are
fortunate, be mentored by experienced incubator
directors.
4a. Availability of experts in business and technol-
ogy to assist entrepreneurs in developing their
firm to be more successful than they could by
themselves. Some incubators have such persons
on the permanent staff, working intensively with
firms.
4b. Other facilities may bring experts in as consult-
ants, on an occasional basis, for specific
projects.
Bi-evolution of the university
Incubation is part of an internal re-ordering of the
university that takes place through a parallel bi-
evolution of missions and focus. The university’s
three missions of teaching, research and economic
development are evolving along parallel paths from
an individual to a group perspective and from being
merely a facilitator for transferring technology to
individual firms to being a force for fostering re-
gional economic and social development.
From at least the mid-19th century the university
has expanded its missions from teaching and conser-
vation of knowledge to research: the first academic
revolution (Jencks and Reisman, 1968). A second
revolution, primarily based upon these research
capacities, occurs as the university takes on the mis-
sion of economic and social development.
The university, a medieval institution for the
conservation and preservation of knowledge, is suc-
cessively transformed into the research university
and then the entrepreneurial university. This devel-
opment is not so much a matter of evolution, the
capture and retention of chance events, but of an
internal dynamic working itself out. Indeed, research
is inherent in teaching, as entrepreneurial science is
The university’s missions of teaching,
research and economic development
are evolving from being merely a
facilitator for transferring technology
to individual firms to being a force for
fostering regional economic and social
development
121
Incubation of incubators
inherent in research. Teaching holds within it the
potential for new ideas and interpretations to be cre-
ated even if the intention is simply to retrieve lost
texts and pass on existing knowledge. New condi-
tions inevitably appear that influence teachers to
reinterpret old knowledge and produce new findings.
Similarly, research directly arises from teaching
even as useful results arise from the conduct of re-
search. Researchers’ alertness to such possibilities is
the sufficient condition for entrepreneurial science,
while the availability of opportunities and mecha-
nisms to realize these implications is the necessary
condition for knowledge-based economic growth.
However, these possibilities are immanent and re-
quire nurturance, mentoring and incubation to be
realized; otherwise they remain merely potentials.
In addition to the academic revolutions that incor-
porate new functions within the university, there is a
parallel organizational transformation of the univer-
sity. A bi-evolution of the university is occurring, a
shift from an individual to a group focus in all three
academic missions. The change is most obvious in
research, especially in the sciences where graduate
students, post doctorates and technicians often sur-
round the professor. In effect this group acts as a
‘quasi-firm’ in the university, having all the aspects
of a company except for the profit motive.
There is a similar transformation in the mission of
economic and social development. Instead of a focus
on an individual patent or technology transfer, there
is a concern with the university playing a broader
role in its region. Sometimes, as in Portugal, where
regional political entities are weak, the university
plays a role of ‘regional innovation organizer (RIO)’
bringing together local businesses and municipalities
to develop an innovation strategy.
The shift toward a focus on groups is more diffi-
cult to discern in education since it typically takes
place in non-traditional academic contexts. Just as
the university trains individual students and sends
them out into the world, it is now doing the same for
organizations. This organizational training occurs
mostly outside the classroom setting and for pur-
poses other than education. For example, at a special
graduation ceremony of firms from the incubator
facility at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio
de Janeiro, one company had come out of an applied
physics research group to develop oil exploration
technology while other firms developed software.
Steps toward incubation
Informal transfer through consultation, faculty stu-
dent relationships and ‘knowledge flows’ through
publication are being superseded by more formal
mechanisms that not only package the technology
into discrete sets of rights but also advance the ex-
ploration of its commercial potential. The following
section discusses points of entry to the university for
independent investors and firms seeking technology
122
including: direct access to research groups, mediated
access through technology transfer offices and
through incubators. Each offers the possibility of
access to potential investments at different stages of
the research and commercialization process.
The development of an assisted linear model of
technology transfer begins with a liaison office, go-
ing a step beyond producing trained graduates and
publications to take knowledge out of the university.
In a second stage, knowledge is encapsulated in a
technology and moved out by a technology transfer
office created to identify, patent, market and license
intellectual property. In a third stage, knowledge and
technology is embodied in a firm and moved out of
the university by an entrepreneur. There are signif i-
cant differences among these formats with respect to
the development stage, intermediation process and
legal status of the technology.
Direct access to the research stream
The research group where discovery occurs is, of
course, the earliest point of access to technology
emanating from academic research. Universities
have established liaison offices to facilitate contacts
but firms often make their own contacts through
former students and personal connections. More in-
tensive methods, such as the Discovery Exchange,
with observers resident in the research group, have
also been proposed to mine the basic research
stream.
Nevertheless, deals are made on the basis of both
actual and potential discovery. Venture capitalists
have dealt directly with professors to build firms on
the perceived commercial potential of a discovery or
a research field. They have also done so based on
intellectual capacities of faculty members and their
research groups even before a specific product is
identified. Bob Swanson and Genentech is the proto-
typical example of the former; the founding of Syn-
ergen in Boulder, Colorado represents the latter
approach.
The technology transfer office, having vetted the
offerings of various research groups, is an interme-
diate source. The concept for an intermediary org-
anization to support academic technology transfer
and commercialization is not new. The Research
Corporation was founded in the early 20th century
by University of California chemist Frederick
Cottrell, the inventor of the electrostatic precipitator,
for this purpose. The Research Corporation handled
technology transfer for universities and dealt directly
with professors before universities took over the
technology transfer themselves. As universities in-
ternalized the technology transfer function, the need
for the Research Corporation declined. 2
Transfer office as a screening mechanism
Organizational innovations such as technology
transfer offices provide a window on academic
Science and Public Policy April 2002

discoveries with commercial potential and a point of
contact to reach the academics who originated them.
Academic scientists and engineers differ greatly in
their interest in realizing financial gain from their
discoveries and in their ability to pursue the practical
implications of their research. Even if they do not
have a pecuniary motivation themselves, transfer
offices can make arrangements to protect and license
discoveries on their behalf and that of the university.
The technology transfer office encourages faculty
members to think of their research in terms of its
technological applications and to present their dis-
coveries that they think have commercial potential
for evaluation.
By law and regulation, US academics receiving
federal research funds are obliged to report to the
administration their research results with useful
and/or commercial-potential findings. In practice,
they may do so or not, as they are inclined. For those
so inclined to disclose, their technological and
commercial awareness only has to be as high as to
indicate to the office that they think they have in-
vented something with potential practical use and/or
financial significance. They need not take any fur-
ther step.
The technology transfer office operates as a dual
search mechanism pulling technology out of univer-
sity research groups, on the one hand, and finding a
place for it in industry, on the other. The office func-
tions as a microscope internally, focusing on the best
candidates within the university and as a telescope,
externally, looking broadly for the best licensing
opportunities. After an initial internal screening, a
transfer office will typically seek external interest
before committing to incur the expense of patenting.
A very few licenses typically provide most of the
income from patenting academic technology. In re-
cent years, universities have explored various ways
to add value to early stage university technologies
by conducting marketing surveys, seeking develop-
ment support and embodying the technology in a
firm.
Research group
(quasi- firm)
Entrepreneur
Knowledge-flow
Publication
Liaison office
Graduates
Consultation
(Individuals)
Research
Contract
Figure 2. Co-evolution and multi-linearity of university–industry relations
Science and Public Policy April 2002
Incubation of incubators
Industrialists had to learn about
new ideas as an audience to the
academic process, then take them up
and use them: incubator-assisted
academics, with little business
experience, were expected to start new
firms based on technology invented in
the university
Incubators as a source of deal flow
The incubator is, of course, a later stage source,
offering access to technology attached to an entre-
preneur. Incubator firms at various stages of
technology-push and market-pull are taken beyond
an inventio n disclosure, on the one hand, and a nap-
kin sketch, on the other. Aggregation of such a
group of new enterprises simplifies the search for
investors. Investments can be made at the point of
admission into the incubator, at the mid-point of
their residence, and after graduation, in a three-tiered
process. After additional vetting of the companies,
funds can be invested in the best firms in the incuba-
tor to assist their growth and movement out of the
incubator.
University-originated technologies are typically
very early stage. Although some may be ready for
transfer to existing firms, there is often a gap be-
tween the interests of industry and the ideas of uni-
versity inventors. While many academics have
unrealistic expectations for their inventions, the pro-
cess of preparing a business plan for entry into an
incubator can provide a reality test. Ideally, the firm-
formation process clarifies business and technology
concepts.
Technology
transfer office
Intellectual property
Patent Incubator
License Technology
Entrepreneur
Firm-formation
Graduates
(Organizations)
123
Incubation of incubators
From linear to interactive incubation
The development of the incubator exemplifies a shift
in academic –industry relations from a linear model
going from university to society, to an interactive
model, with a flow of influence in both directions
(see Figure 2). Such a model assumes that the uni-
versity educational and research agenda can be posi-
tively influenced by societal as well as disciplinary
interests. University incubators were expected to
speed up knowledge flows.
The normal academic process is to write a paper,
present at a conference and eventually publish in a
journal. People in industry were expected to learn
about new ideas as an audience to this academic pro-
cess and then take them up and put them to use. The
incubator-assisted academics, with little or no bus i-
ness experience, were expected to start new firms
based on technology invented in the university.
Reverse linear incubation
University incubators originally adhered to a linear
model of starting from academic research; soon,
however, that direction was reversed. Sometimes
insufficient academics were interested in starting
companies to fill the facility, and former employees
of nearby large companies, learning about the incu-
bator from local publicity, asked if they too could
join it. Some of these technical entrepreneurs were
simply interested in moving their firms out of their
homes to a prestigious location; the common support
services and easier access to university facilities,
faculty and students attracted others. Thus, the uni-
versity incubator became a mix of academics and
business people starting firms in the same place,
with each learning from the other.
Networked incubation
An incubator can assist the entrepreneur in linking
their networks and inserting the new firm into
broader networks. Whether started from the business
or technical side, the firm-formation process often
takes off through collaboration among persons with
different skills and assets. A successful firm typi-
cally arises from a confluence of various networks:
business, financial, technical and so on. The sources
of these networks may be old school colleagues,
family, friends and co-workers. It is also possible to
extend the concept of networking from individual
firms to incubators and from individual networked
incubators to networks of incubators.
A typology of incubator networking
It is instructive to categorize incubators according to
their networking dynamics:
• ‘intra-networking,’ or operating through internal
networks among firms within incubators;
124
• ‘inter-networking,’ or operating through external
networks among incubators and firms from differ-
ent incubators; and
• ‘extra-networking,’ or operating through the for-
mation of new organizations in incubators from
heterogeneous entities.
In the case of the latter two types, it is also instruc-
tive to view them against the background of the
particular academic institutions in which they
developed.
Private incubator: intra-networking
The private incubator typically starts from a single
business idea, something of a departure from the
classic university incubator, which theoretically is
open to ideas for firms from all parts of the univer-
sity. In the private incubator, the overall business
concept is apportioned among constituent firms,
which at a very early stage start doing business with
each other. For example, in Internet businesses,
which have been particularly active in intra-
networking, one firm typically does another’s coding
or graphics.
Brazilian incubator movement: inter-networking
Since the introduction of the incubator concept in
the mid-1980s, incubators have developed rapidly in
Brazil, gaining support not only from universities,
their original sponsors, but also from government at
federal, state and local levels and from industry as-
sociations. In federal and state universities with a
strong ‘public’ tradition, there was initially consid-
erable resistance to incubators among many faculty
members on the grounds that they represented the
‘privatization of the university.’
Instead of building new facilities immediately,
early Brazilian incubators, such as the one at the
Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, developed
firms in temporary space, incubating themselves.
When the director of the incubator, Mauricio
Guedes, gained construction funds from the munic i-
pality, the issue of official university approval was
brought to a head.
Resistance to the university mentoring private
businesses inspired a creative transformation of the
incubator concept to fulfill the university’s public
mission in non-traditional terms. To create jobs,
‘popular cooperatives’ were formed by the Graduate
School of Engineering (COPPE) of the Federal Uni-
versity of Rio de Janeiro. The university invited low-
income people from neighboring favelas (slums) for
training, shaping them into a group cooperative to
perform services and then sending them out into the
world as an organization. The popular cooperative
incubators were seen as successful and were ex-
tended through a national program to other parts of
Brazil.
An incubator movement arose through these
Science and Public Policy April 2002

various sources of support. Several permutations of
the university business incubator have been created
such as the ‘hotel for firms,’ a pre-incubation space
for the firm-founder to hone their concept, find part-
ners and raise funds. The Brazilian national govern-
ment, which from the 70s had put most of its S&T
resources into large projects, began to redirect its
efforts, especially in an era of reduced funds, to as-
sist incubator development.
Other levels of government, state and local, also
became involved. For example, municipalities took
notice of the innovation and supported the growth of
incubators by providing financing and other help.
Incubators were started not only by universities but
together with municipalities, and not only in the cit-
ies that had universities but in other municipalities
as well.
Networking among incubators, and firms from
different Brazilian incubators, occurred extensively.
For example, at the incubator in the Federal Univer-
sity of Fluminense (UFF) a content firm was based
on a software platform from a firm in another incu-
bator. A network of experienced directors mentored
the director, who had come to the job from the
university library.
The Rio de Janeiro network meets on a monthly
basis to discuss common issues. The national meet-
ings of ANPROTEC bring together academic ana-
lysts of incubation together with incubator directors
and personnel, providing an ongoing feedback of
research to the incubation process, sponsored by the
association itself, as well as by Brazilian research
agencies. Networking helps explain the rapid growth
of the incubator movement, especially to universities
and municipalities with less than optimum resources.
Albany model: extra-networking
The extra-networked incubator, typified in the Al-
bany model brings together heterogeneous elements
from various sources to create new hybrid organiza-
tions. The University at Albany lacked a sufficient
research base to systematically develop new tech-
nology firms, the traditional incubator function. To
generate critical mass, the university invited local
high-tech start-ups, R&D units of larger firms,
laboratories from the state government and research
groups from the university into the incubator. The
objective was to attract funds from the state and fed-
eral governments to develop new research centers.
Frederick Terman built Stanford into a research
powerhouse after World War II by concentrating on
‘steeples of excellence,’ or selected areas of faculty
expertise. He held that it took a generation to
achieve academic distinction in a field. The emerg-
ing role of the Albany incubator was to speed up the
academic development process. A university official
stated the problem as follows: “We don’t have the
resources of a major research university, we aspire
to be a major research university so we are looking
at non-traditional paths to get to that goal.” Several
Science and Public Policy April 2002
Incubation of incubators
centers were organized along the themes of the Al-
bany incubators, one in biotechnology and a second
in the areas of micro-electronics, semi-conductors,
computers, software and atmospherics.
Incubators and regional development
The growth of incubation is an instance of science,
technology and innovation policy arising from a dy-
namic of university–industry–government interac-
tions rather than solely from government actions.
The method of change in the triple helix appears
strange: it is not solely market driven and not sole ly
policy driven; nobody runs the show alone.
The triple helix model of semi-autonomous spirals
moves actors out of their institution-bound mindset
into a hybrid framework in which each internalizes
some of the other’s perspectives and ‘takes the role
of the other.’ The university takes a role in helping
start up businesses and in encouraging the develop-
ment of regional ‘clusters;’ firms collaborate and
share knowledge, moving closer to an academic
model; industry moves closer to the university; and
government encourages this interplay both by pro-
viding a regulatory environment that stimulates in-
terchange and by acting as a ‘public venture
capitalist.’
As entrepreneurial academic activities intensify,
they may ignite a self-generating process of firm-
formation, no longer directly tied to a particular uni-
versity. The growth of industrial conurbations
around universities, supported by government re-
search funding, has become the hallmark of a re-
gional innovation system, exemplified by Silicon
Valley; the profile of knowledge-based economic
development was further raised by the founding of
Genentech and other biotechnology companies
based on academic research in the 1980s. Once
takeoff occurs in the USA only the private sector is
usually credited; the role of government, for exam-
ple, the Defense Research Projects Agency
(DARPA) in founding SUN, Silicon Graphics and
Cisco is forgotten.
Most regions, however, lack innovation systems;
rather they are innovation environments with some
elements to encourage innovation present and others
missing. In such situations it is important for some
group or organization to play the role of RIO and
bring the various elements of the triple helix to-
gether to foster new projects. Things start to grow
around concepts, like Silicon Alle y in New York and
Oresund in Copenhagen/southern Sweden, that unite
politicians, businesspersons and academics. Imagery
is also important, since there often are not strong
market reasons to allocate resources to development
of a region.
Regions may be viewed as ‘thick’ or ‘thin’ de-
pending upon the presence or absence of business
and technology development services. Whether it
makes sense for an incubator to develop its own
125
Incubation of incubators
services largely depends upon their availability
within the surrounding region. A region that is rich
in requisites such as venture capital may not have to
develop them in direct association with the incuba-
tor. On the other hand, a region that is lacking such
tools may find it necessary to combine them with the
incubator project.
The University at Stony Brook developed a series
of initiatives, such as visits by lawyers and account-
ants, to compensate for its ‘green field’ site on the
outer edge of suburbia. On the other hand, the Uni-
versity at Albany saw no need for such measures
since rele vant services were readily available in the
Capitol region.
The incubation process may be viewed as a ma-
trix, with some slots more or less filled and various
gaps left open in different countries and regions.
Incubator firms in most countries typically face the
problem of lack of access to seed venture capital on
reasonable terms. FINEP, the Brazilian national de-
velopment agency, has launched INNOVA, a pro-
gram to create funds to fill this gap, while Israel
provides a grant of funds upon admission to its incu-
bator program. In Denmark, there is a fund to invest
in incubator firms. but a problem is lack of market
representation abroad. An incubator at the National
Technological University in Norway has addressed
this issue by stationing a representative at an incuba-
tor in Palo Alto.
The teaching incubator
The incubator has evolved into a multi-faced entity
for entrepreneurial education and as a support struc-
ture for innovation, a broader purpose than develop-
ing firms from academic research. In addition to
organizational innovations, such as the incubator,
the creation of an entrepreneurial culture provides
the sufficient condition for a wave of incubation and
firm-formation.
Gustavo Cadena, the Director of the incubator at
the National Autonomous University of Mexico
(UNAM), developed the idea of using the incubator
as a training facility, to bring together the engineer-
ing and business students. Instead of the different
streams of students being educated separately, they
would also have some common courses on entrepre-
neurship in a classroom at the incubator. Further-
more, there was the opportunity to work in incubator
firms so that they might think in the future of
starting new firms themselves.
The incubator of incubators
The process of organizing incubators can be sys-
tematized by formalizing the Brazilian networking
experience in which an older incubator facility at a
large university serves as an informal hub, mentor-
ing and benchmarking for newer incubators at
smaller universities. A model incubator or ‘incubator
of incubators’ could be established as the central
126
Organizing incubators can be
systematized by formalizing the
Brazilian experience in which an older
incubator facility at a large university
serves as an informal hub, mentoring
and benchmarking for newer
incubators at smaller universities
node of a network of incubators and as a training
facility for future incubator directors. This concept
brings together the training students in Mexican in-
cubators with the networking of incubators in Brazil
into an entity explicitly designed as an educational
facility to train incubator directors and firm founders
in firm-formation and networking.
The ‘incubator of incubators’ concept for a model
training facility and linkage node is especially use
ful to begin the incubation process in a region or
country, such as Honduras, lacking incubators as of
2000. Such a facility could send out trained people
from the ‘mother’ or hub incubator to staff ‘daugh-
ter’ incubators. For example, from an initial site in
San Pedro Sula, incubators could be replicated in
other cities and towns in Honduras as part of a net-
work to promote technology transfer and diffusion
of new business models. The Polytechnico Milan
has recently adopted this model to link incubators at
its satellite campuses in the Lombardy region to the
main campus in Milan.
Organizational technology transfer
Various mechanisms exist for transferring ‘hard’
technologies; the transfer of ‘soft’ organizational
technologies is happenstance. Sometimes, it occurs
through professional tourism as visitors of various
nationalities took the Stanford science park model
back to their own countries. Incubators typically
lack the ability to assist their firms to reach partners
and markets in other countries. This is especially
a problem in developing countries and small
nations. A mechanism is required to systematically
organize incubator networking across regions and
countries.
The concept for a World Innovation Network
(WIN) is to do for incubators what an incubator does
for its firms — provide a support structure to enable
them to extend their activities into a broader arena
and thereby enhance their chances of success. A
small staff would coordinate and facilitate introduc-
tions and collaborations among its members. For
example, an incubator firm in one country might
need a partner to assist in developing its product or
might wish to locate a sales representative at an
Science and Public Policy April 2002

incubator in another country. At present such ar-
rangements typically happen by chance.
Conclusion: the university of the future
The University of the Future will include an incuba-
tor as a regular feature along with classrooms, faculty
offices and laboratories in each department or
academic unit. Technology transfer and incubation of
firms is being transformed from happenstance occur-
rences to an organized business, with significant
implications for the university’s role in society.
The incubator process can also have a positive ef-
fect back on research and teaching at the university.
As we have seen, the incubator at the State Univer-
sity of New York at Albany enhances the research
capabilities of the university by incubating new
research centers and firms. Firms in the incubator
collaborate with professors from the university and
with laboratories from the state government. New
research projects and new joint research centers have
been organized through these collaborations. There
is no longer an assumption that there is a single
starting point of research and an end point of the
economy, or a starting point of central government
policy directing academia and industry.
Academic incubation is increasingly part of a
broader complex of university–industry relations
including technology transfer licensing and liaison
offices. These various programs are currently being
reorganized into a common administrative authority,
on the one hand, and decentralized into individual
academic units, on the other.
As the academic entrepreneurial paradigm takes
hold, interface capabilities spread throughout the
university. Within academic departments and cen-
ters, faculty members and other technical personnel
may be assigned special responsibility to assess the
commercial salience of research findings and en-
courage interaction with external partners. For ex-
ample, a faculty member in the Columbia University
Medical School divides her time between traditional
academic and technology transfer responsibilities.
The success of incubation will ultimately be seen
in the disappearance of the incubator as a separate
entity in a remote or off-campus site. The teaching
laboratory originated in an out-building of the Uni-
versity of Giessen, Germany in the mid-19th cen-
tury. In the first academic revolution, the university
was transformed from a teaching into a research en-
tity, reflected in the physical structure of the univer-
sity through the construction of laboratories and
faculty offices, denoting a full-time, rather than a
part-time faculty. A progression will take place
similar to the one that integrated the laboratory into
the basic design of an academic building. Incubation
will be decentralized throughout the university,
along with technology transfer and entrepreneurial
training.
The second academic revolution, the take-up of a
Science and Public Policy April 2002
Incubation of incubators
mission of economic and social development, will
be reflected in the inclusion of incubators and uni-
versity–industry joint-research centers in academic
buildings, on the one hand, and the establishment of
distance learning and other outreach capabilities on
the other.
The future of the university also resides in strat-
egic alliances among academic and other knowl-
edge-based organizations, in virtual institutes and
research groups bringing together students and
teachers, at various levels, in joint projects, and in
educating organizations as well as individuals in
entrepreneurship centers and incubators.
The university will play a more prominent role in
society, through exchanging functions with industry
and government, and by creating the pre-conditions
for regional economic and social development. The
structure of the triple helix depicts the university as a
regional innovation organizer as well as a disinter-
ested observer and social critic, a capacious institu-
tion capable of incorporating multiple functions and
reconciling apparently contradictory objectives in
the search for truth, beauty and wealth.
Notes
1. Statement made at New York Academy of Sciences periodic
meetings on “New York as a High Tech Region” by various
observers in the late 1990s.
2. Research Corporation (RC) has moved up the ‘food chain,’
transforming itself into a venture capital firm that accesses
investment opportunities through university technology trans-
fer offices. In its original format, as a not-for-profit entity, RC
made grants to academic researchers with the earnings from
patent licenses. The redistribution of income from the com-
mercialization of technology in the form of ‘seed grants’ to
researchers has been taken up by contemporary university
technology offices and their administrative sponsors, taking
the university a step toward becoming a self-supporting insti-
tution based on the capitalization of know ledge. The next
step in this progression is the holding of equity in firms
based on academic research, the most recent development
in university endowment management strategy in the USA
that has undergone a shift in risk orientation from preferred
to common stock and, more recently, to venture capital, as
well.
3. For additional information on international incubation, see
World Conference on Business Incubation www.wcbi.com.
For examples of national associations, see: ANPROTEC
(Brazil) and National Business Incubation Association (NBIA)
USA.
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