Abstract/Summary

The role of business incubation has become increasingly important for start-ups, and policymakers around the world are increasingly establishing business incubators to provide support services to these start-ups. Research scholars have also produced a significant body of literature on the incubation processes with an array of interventions and outcomes. Thus, there is a pressing need to synthesize the available literature into prescriptive frameworks for business incubation processes. Employing the Context, Intervention, Mechanism and Outcome (CIMO) methodology, the study proposes four frameworks for business incubation, namely, social impact creation, innovation support, entrepreneurial culture development and commercialization and growth. Emphasizing the intricate nature of the entrepreneurial ecosystem, this study underscores the necessity of a holistic, multi-level comprehension of the factors shaping start-up performance. While prevailing literature often focuses on singular levels, this study integrates founder, incubator and country characteristics by presenting a multi-level model to elucidate the interplay of these factors influencing start-up performance. Employing a global data set comprising 408 incubation programs across 178 countries, the study operationalized the multi-level model and analyzed it using multi-level random intercept modeling. The findings indicate that start-up performance operationalized in terms of equity raised and sales growth, is contingent upon founder attributes, such as, graduate degree, prior start-up and prior incubator experience, as well as the type of incubator program, particularly financial support and specialized incubation services. Notably, these factors exhibit idiosyncratic influences across different start-up performance measures. This study holds significant theoretical and practical implications for researchers, entrepreneurs, investors, incubation managers and policymakers.