On the role of business incubators to foster entrepreneurship

One of the mostly used instruments to foster entrepreuneurship are business incubators, which aim to support the development of new business ideas in which the incubators help firms to survive and grow during their initial stages. The objective of this paper is to provide the results of the analysis of three case studies about the business incubation process in Portugal, contributing to enhance the knowledge about this subject. The main findings of the paper are the following: the three incubators are focused on stimulating entrepreneurship, new business ideas and innovation, and are concerned in being a facilitator agent of the success of those new projects; however, some differences might be seen among these incubators, namely in terms of criteria used to select the new business ideas or projects, the support services provided to the incubatees, the incubation period, and the type of projects supported