Business Incubators Leveraging Skill Utilization through Social Capital

This study examines the role that social capital among tenant companies of a business incubator plays in the acquisition and utilization of business skills by those companies. Social capital is a resource derived from the structure and content of social relations among individuals or groups. Questionnaire data were gathered from 53 managers (primarily owners) of tenant companies in five incubators established by the State Privatization Office of the Turkish Republic. As hypothesized, relational social capital and cognitive social capital each had a significant unique and positive relationship with skill utilization. Contrary to a hypothesis, structural social capital did not have a significant unique relationship with skill utilization. These results indicate that incubator tenant companies' skill utilization is enhanced by social capital generated from the content of relations between the companies such as whether they trust and identify with each other and whether they share a common language and perspective