Some attributes of South African incubators for new, independent, high-technology business ventures

M.Ing.Sunter (1999:13) states "Unemployment is now the scourge of virtually every single nation." Sunter believes that unemployment or the creation of new jobs will be the responsibility of small businesses. If one however analyses the survival of new business ventures, failure is not the exception but the rule. According to literature 52% of all new business ventures are dissolved within the first four years of their existence and 63% within 6 years. Various publications on business incubators state that new business ventures that were incubated by business incubators demonstrated a success rate that is as high or higher than the failure rate of non-incubated new business ventures. A typical success rate of approximately 86% is quoted as the norm for these incubated ventures. The success rate can be attributed to the support provided by the incubators. The support and services provided by incubators consist typically of a range of products but the distinguishing attribute or feature is the support programme developed and tailored to meet the specific requirements of each individual organisation that joined the incubator. To ensure that jobs are created in South Africa it seems that incubators should be in a position to contribute much. The results of an evaluation of the achievements of seven of the highly visible incubators in South Africa, indicate that the flirtation with incubators resulted in very limited success. None of the seven examples were found to be very successful, but not all for the same reason. The aim of this dissertation is to identify some of the attributes that a high-technology incubator should possess to ensure success. The approach adopted was to: Define what a high-technology business incubator is. Identify the typical life-cycle of new ventures. Determine why new ventures fail. Determine the critical success factors of new ventures Determine the reasons for failure of South African high technology business ventures and incubators. Then based on the results of the above define some of the attributes a South African incubator should possess. The conclusion is that the attributes, excluding flexible lease space, shared business services and networking to the know-how network (technical) of the South African incubators are well developed. The following attributes were found lacking and should be fully developed: Education, training and information programmes; Networking to debt and equity capital and networking in general and Counselling and mentoring support. These attributes are those that will enable an incubator to develop and tailor support programmes to meet the specific requirements of individual firms. The South African environment is identified as being detrimental to the development of small new ventures and it was recommended that it should form the subject of further research