Competitive environment of business incubators in the Czech Republic

This thesis deals with application of Competitive Intelligence in the environment of business incubators in the Czech Republic. The main goal of this work is to analyze the competitive environment of Czech business incubators and draw conclusions leading to a possible increase of their competitiveness. The theoretical part describes the competitive intelligence including selected analytic methods, the support system for development of small and medium-sized enterprises, the role of the state in their support and aspects of innovative business. The following part deals with characteristics of business incubation, basic division of business incubators and their importance for the development of SMEs. It then describes the history of incubators in the world and the way they operate in the Czech Republic, including description of basic services provided. The practical part analyzes broader competitive environment throughout the country, using Porter's five competitive forces model. Then there is a complete list compiled of all operating and planned incubators in the Czech Republic displayed on a map, divided into different regions. There are six incubators selected for a thorough competitive analysis in the Central region and the city of Prague, which are the regions with the strongest competitive environment in the Czech Republic. Based on results of analyses mentioned above, there is a set of final recommendations on how to increase the competitiveness of Czech business incubators and to get overall improvement in business incubation