Factors Promoting Youth Entrepreneurship in Business Incubation Centers. The Case of Kenyan Business Innovation and Incubation Centers

A Research Project Report Submitted to the Chandaria School of Business in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Master of Business Administration (MBA)The general objective of this study was to determine the factors promoting youth entrepreneurship in business incubation centres. The incubation centres facilitate those who have some new innovative ideas to get them converted in successful business by providing business skills, management support and financial support exposure to entrepreneurial networks. The specific objectives of the study were; to investigate how business skill training in incubation centres promote youth entrepreneurship, the second specific objective was to evaluate how management support in incubation centres promote youth entrepreneurship, and finally to find out how financial resource support in incubation centres promote youth entrepreneurship. The study adopted a descriptive research design, and which was carried on from September 2017 to March 2018. The target population of the study was 80 incubatees which were given out, 64 questionnaires were returned having been duly filled in and completed by the incubatees which represented a response rate of 80. The study used a stratified sampling technique for the sampling method. The study used primary data which was collected by use of semi-structured questionnaires. Analysis and presentation methods were quantitative and qualitative in which data was analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS ver.24) and excel which was employed to generate graphs, pie charts, tables and bar charts to represent the percentages generated from each of the specific objectives. Inferential statistics was carried out to determine the relationship between the independent and dependent variables of the study. On the first objective where it was how business skills training has enhanced youth entrepreneurship. There was a weak positive relationship between management support in the incubation centres and acquisition of the business skills training. On the second objective relationships between youth entrepreneurship and management support where there was a strong positive correlation between youth entrepreneurship and management support. The last objective showed the relationships between youth entrepreneurship and financial support where there was a weak positive relationship between youth entrepreneurship and financial support. It can be concluded that there was positive relationship between the factors promoting youth entrepreneurship and the business skills training that are offered in the incubation centres. This indicates that incubation provides a platform that greatly supports the v development of start-ups as an incubator especially in their budding stage by providing them with space, advice, mentorship, connections with a link to the investors and all the resources that are available. On the second objective it can be concluded that management training is very informative and important in the impact assessment of the incubatees. Intensive levels of entrepreneurial training lead to enhanced entrepreneurial performance in revenues and business scalability. Human resource management training, Coaching and marketing management were very important. Management training plays a big role in equipping the entrepreneurs with the necessary skills to start, grow and eventually pitch their enterprises to acquire the right strategic partners. On the last objective it be concluded that incubation centres play a fundamental role in giving entrepreneurs an opportunity to access capital investment enabling them to produce efficiently and compete not only nationally but globally. Financial support helps in riches improvement, amplification of benefit, expansion of degree of profitability of shareholders and fulfilling partner value of their funds in the process of funding the business. The study recommends on the first objective that incubator’s capacity to leverage knowledge flows from the external expert network should be deepened so that incubatees and prospective incubatees should benefit to increase their chances of survival. Secondly on management support recommends that the research should focus on the role of stakeholders especially communities, suppliers and the customers in business incubation support. A stakeholder approach could help us to understand better how well incubators are embedded and supported in the local economy contributing to economic development. The last objective recommends that business incubation centres need to be run through a business model that is self-sustaining. This can be done by getting committed equity partners or offering stakes in the incubated companies to venture capitalists who can both grow and coach the upcoming entrepreneurs. For further studies it recommends same study should be replicated and does the analysis on the view of the managers of this incubation centres which will bring more insights on the impact of the study. It should also focus on the alumni or those who have graduated from the incubation centres and see if there is an impact of the training or funding they have received from the investors