“Land Use and Water Management in a Sustainable Network Society” Technology Incubators as Nodes in Knowledge Networks

Over the last 20 years, there has been a considerable effort to search for a ‘new ’ model of regional economic development. In this respect, the role of small high-technology firms in economic growth and innovation has received a great deal of attention from regional economists, geographers, planners and policy makers. Among the many ways to support the growth of new technology-based firms, perhaps the most captivating one is establishing technology incubators. However, systematic studies of the factors determining the growth of technology incubators are scarce. This paper is written in response to this situation. Using data of incubators in various regions in the developed world, we explore the role of several factors in determining differences in growth. The factors can be categorized into external factors, i.e. regional economic conditions, regional entrepreneurial culture and the degree of stakeholder involvement, and internal factors, i.e. incubation strategy, type of support for start-up firms, and age of the incubator. In our analysis we use a relatively new approach that matches with small (selected) samples and qualitative (and sometimes fuzzy) data i.e. rough set analysis. The findings suggest an explanation of the incubator growth mainly based on the diversity in stakeholder involvement and various internal factors of incubators