Guest Article by Alfred Mbeteh – Senior lecturer at Arden University
In this article, I share the 10 commandments of specifically setting up a Hybrid University Business Incubator herein referred to as HUBI, which is derived from my experience in playing a leading role in the set-up and running of the Arden University Enterprise Incubator (AEI) and my general knowledge and experience in providing enterprise support services for youths and youth led ventures. The 10 commandments will be particularly useful for enterprise educators, practitioners and government officials who might be particularly interested in building and growing a thriving business incubator within the university setting.
Like most business ideas, the concept of Business Incubators (BI) was born out of a problem. Basically, a local real estate developer acquired an 850,000 square-feet building and rented it out to a large corporation who later exited the area. The developer resulted in subletting the property by partitions to various entities as he was unable to find a single entity that could lease the entire facility.
Subsequently, some of the entities (tenants) began requesting for business advice in relation to things like raising capital, growth strategies etc (Adkins, 2001).
Since then, there has been a proliferation of business incubators across the world. The National Business Incubator Association (NBIA), for instance, estimates that there are about 7,000 business incubators around the world, the majority of which span across the US and Europe.
BI as a concept has also been adopted by universities for its potential to increase graduate outcomes and contribution to the economic development of nations.
University Business Incubator, herein referred to as UBI, helps in stimulating the mindset of students towards entrepreneurship, develop their skill sets and ideas and connect them to mentors and potential investors. Thus, UBI is fast becoming a requirement for universities rather than “nice-to-have”.
However, most universities have been primarily focused on providing a physical space for their students, neglecting the virtual elements that might together create a bigger impact. The reason for this could be twofold.
First, most of the definitions of BI tend to suggest that the provision of ‘incubator services’ are only to be carried out within a physical environment/building.
For example, Hacket and Dilts, (2004) defined it as a ‘shared office-space facility’ that seeks to provide it incubates (i.e., ‘‘portfolio-’’ or ‘‘client-’’ or “tenant-companies’’) with valuable business services. Similarly, Allen and Rahman (1985) averred that BI focuses on the provision of ‘rental space, shared office’, and assistance through business consulting services. Hughes et al. (2007), also stated that a business incubator is “a facility that houses young, small firms to help them develop quickly into competitive businesses” (p.155).
Second, a good number of universities still deliver their programmes using the traditional face to face methodology. However, with the advancement in technology, the rise in remote/flexible working, work life balance and the accompanying laws, a lot of students now prefer a Blended Learning (BL) approach. BL simply refers to the use of face-to-face and virtual environments to deliver programmes.
Thus, to align with the changing needs, it will be strategic for universities to develop and deploy a Hybrid University Business Incubator herein referred to as HUBI.
In this article, I share the 10 commandments of specifically setting up a Hybrid University Business Incubator (HUBI), which is derived from my experience in playing a leading role in the set-up of the Arden University Enterprise Incubator (AEI) and my general knowledge and experience in providing enterprise support services for youths and youth led ventures.
1. Thou shall engage key stakeholders.
Start with a broad engagement of the Senior Management Team (SMT), Deans, the student body, and the key staff from all departments/schools e.g., marketing, IT. Such engagements will help you to get a university wide buy in and collate useful data that will help you set the strategic direction of the incubator.
2. Thou shall develop a clear vision
Setting a vision will allow you, your team, and all stakeholders to see the bigger picture and pulls you towards the desired destination.
3. Thou shall agree on key business support services
There are many services that can be provided by an incubator such as mentorship, provision of capital, master classes, bootcamps, networking etc Whilst it will be great to offer your students all of these services, in reality this isn’t possible as most universities see in-house incubators as cost centres and thus will be unwilling to provide the funding needed to support all of the services. Thus, only choose those services that can be delivered with the resources available.
4. Thou shall segment your audience.
Clearly define your target audience. Are you targeting current or past students or both? Defining this earlier will enable you to for instance assess how past students will be able to access the virtual and physical platforms as their university emails and IDs would have ceased working.
5. Thou shall form linkages with industry.
Start with listing the existing partners that your university works with, identify their strengths/core offerings, and then reach out and be specific about what you would want them to help with e.g., mentors, resources, events etc and how they will benefit from their engagements.
Deliberately develop rapport with key members within each partner institution and keep the conversation going.
6. Thou shall think strongly about sustainability of the incubator
As stated earlier, since university incubators are primarily set up as cost centres, the senior management teams of most universities are weary about allocating a huge budget for it especially at the beginning.
Therefore, think of ways to fund activities outside of the university’s coffers e.g., apply for external funding, leverage on the free resources and expertise of local and international partners who are interested in supporting entrepreneurship and graduate empowerment programmes, sell merchandise, and reinvest the funds, reach out to alumni etc.
Also, consider securing a space on campus that you can potentially rent out to the incubates at subsidised rate.
7. Thou shall set up student and staff panels.
The key people that will help you to operationalise and grow the incubator are your students and colleagues. Thus, set up both staff and student panels and regularly meet to get feedback and ideas from them.
8. Thou shall Set up student led enterprise clubs.
Set up enterprise clubs on every campus and distance learning space and get a student volunteer to lead each of the clubs. The purpose of the club is to specifically help in organising local entrepreneurial events and encourage regular meetings of students to spur interest in entrepreneurship and help to nurture ideas and existing student-owned businesses.
9. Thou shall establish KPIs.
Setting Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) will enable you track progress and showcase impact which will in turn draw the attention of your key stakeholders towards your offering.
10. Thou shall develop a virtual platform and prepare to launch
Work closely with the developers and UX designers to build a user-friendly platform and test it out with a cross section of students, staff senior management and partners before officially launching it.
At Arden, we for instance conducted three sets of focus groups with the student, staff and partners and senior management to collate feedback on the platform being developed. This was a very useful exercise; it gave us an opportunity to hear from them and develop a platform in line with their needs.
I hope these 10 commandments will help shape the launch of your Hybrid University Business Incubator and/or improve on an existing one.