The Strategic Impact Of Universities Networks To The Growth And Innovativeness Of The Firms

New Technology-based Firms (NTBFs) have been widely recognized for their prominent role in promoting economic growth and regional innovation. Due · to their significance and strategic existence, many incubators have been established to support and ensure the survival and growth of these firms. Research have pointed out that much of the firms' success depends highly on their capability in building and developing networks. To carry out their mission to the fullest, incubators need to understand about firms' networks, especially their characteristics. Unfortunately, little is known about networks characteristics of those firms at incubators and more importantly, whether university or incubators have played an important role 1n the development of NTBFs. For that reason, we conducted this study to address the questions: Does support from university-incubator have any impact on the growth and innovativeness of NTBFs strategically? and then What is the role of support in influencing the relationship between networks and the growth and innovativeness of NTBFs?There were seven hypotheses tested for this study to three incubators in universities were selected as they present a similar objective in nurturing technology-based firms. In the analysis, a hierarchical moderated regression analysis was employed. The empirical findings drawn from our analysis confirmed that university and incubator have a mixed role in the growth of NTBFs. Apparently, support from incubator Lends to influence growth in term of job growth and location dose to university tends to influence firms' level of innovativeness. Analyzing the influence of network characteristics, we found that NTBFs having loose networks are likely to be in a better position to grow compared to their counterparts that employ tight and strong relationships. Contrary to our expectation, the findings failed to prove the importance of strong or weak ties on growth. The results on the moderating effect showed interesting findings that location and number of support play their important role differently. Location close to university was found to play a role in determining the relationship between · network characteristics and level of innovation white support has influence on the relationship between network characteristics and job growt