Abstract
This is a timely text which advances our understanding of technology and business incubators as intermediary mechanisms to promote early-stage entrepreneurship in a university knowledge-transfer setting. A number of interesting new theoretical propositions are advanced, which although are not a clear departure from previous research, do highlight the potential for ongoing work in the area. As researchers in the area, we stand assured that there is still a lot to be investigated and said when it comes to de-coding the ‘blackbox’ of the business incubation process. It is this blackbox, or what really goes on inside incubators, that has researchers still interested and thankfully for all of us, making headway. The incubation community-of-practice keeps the debates going and arguably methodologically robust research appraisals of incubators’ performance from around the world, continues to keep the topic of ‘incubators’ and ‘entrepreneurship promotion mechanisms’ hot. This text is worth emulating for aspiring research students, if not for its clarity or originality, then certainly on the topic of ‘how to get noticed’ in a crowded space of excellent incubator-incubation researchers.
The book is written in an easy to follow, narrative style while conforming to the usual norms of academic writing, which makes it a helpful read for any aspiring Masters or PhD student interested in entrepreneurship’s promotion mechanisms. Often doctoral students struggle with finding the so-called “Rosetta Stone” to de-code the social sciences PhD process; this book should illuminate the path to their PhD finish line. To the careful reader, there are important clues in this text about validity, reliability, transparency, methodological design, data coding, the extraction of meaningful research objectives, data presentation and the thinking process behind the building of new theory. The work that goes into completing a work of such magnitude, must be done justice-to by its authors. In that, its outcomes must be presented in a convincing, believable and easy-to-recall manner. Often, in an effort to pack-in too much detail, sometimes the big ideas become inaccessible, buried in layers of overkill textual critique or explanation-to-death of theoretical assumptions or some other misuse of norms of inquiry by well-meaning students (and also senior researchers at times). The reader must be kept in mind at all times, it is unfair to put unrealistic demands on the reader’s ability to follow thin threads – the reader will give up if not captivated every step of the way. In this vein, the authors of this book, when it comes to presenting arguments coherently and also captivatingly, must be congratulated for setting an instructive example for any doctoral student to emulate.
For research scholars in the area, the book presents a number of useful approaches to the study of the topic, particularly the use of third-person storytelling as a methodological tool within a qualitative case study design based on rich-descriptions. More than anything else, storytelling makes this work accessible, which is admirable. One can’t help but be drawn into the lifeworld of the research subjects, requiring us to empathise with both the subjects and the researchers. There is quite a lot going on in the research setting, depending on the unit of analysis – the incubator, the tenants or the tenants’ own external networks and there could be other units. What is clear from the stories the authors have crafted, is that the internal lifeworld of incubators is complex with multiple layers. Storytelling, the way the authors have deployed it, in a way overcomes this complexity problem; stories here act as markers that encode a sketch of human experience in a time-space cross-section, by-passing the need for lengthy theorising – the onus is placed on the reasonable-ness of the reader to draw conclusions. Such an approach validates previous understanding with evidence presented in a new and arguably more ‘interesting’ way.
The content of this book is spread over 10 chapters and number of useful appendices that provide illustrations to qualitative researchers on preparing interview guides and data coding. Chapter 1 explains the research’s setting and a rationale for why it represented an archetypical incubator. Chapters 2 and 3 represent the two bodies of literature that this research uses as its theoretical foundation. Chapter 2 is a useful attempt to summarize previous research on university business incubation, reconcile definitions and present an assessment of the phenomenon from the standpoint of new theoretical advances. There is a special emphasis on how previous researchers had conceptualized the relational dynamics of incubators’ internal teams to lay theoretical foundations. Chapter 3 draws on the literature on entrepreneurial learning, especially in the context of business incubation, to highlight how service delivery by incubators impacts the progress made by entrepreneurs in the start-up process. A key outcome in this chapter is a theoretical framework to enable further investigation of entrepreneurial learning in relational context. Chapter 4 presents a rationale for the research methodology – the case study method, an outline of the research methods – which are exclusively qualitative, and data analysis protocols. What is appreciable here is transparency and a focus on building in reliability and validity checks.
By far, Chapter 5 is the most engaging to read – narratives neatly stitched together from the data collection exercise illustrate individual entrepreneurial journeys effectively and represent a truly novel way of data presentation. The narratives are compared and contrasted, and reflections are presented on key features of the case site that enable it to enact its incubation process. Chapters 6 and 7 present the research’s major analytical outcomes. The authors make the case that incubation presents potential in two key stages of the entrepreneurial process – opportunity recognition and opportunity development. In Chapter 6 it is argued that various types of prior knowledge with entrepreneurs is key when it comes to opportunity recognition. The role of the incubator really lies in the transformation, transfer and replication of this knowledge for the benefit of the entire hosted incubation community. Chapter 7 makes the case for the potential for new types of learning that the incubation process can introduce in entrepreneurs. The same narrative style of data presentation from Chapter 5 is reemployed here to good effect, where the authors, by scrutinizing individual cases, are able to delineate seven different types of ‘learning areas’ that entrepreneurs could be exposed to – which are contended to be important for entrepreneurial development.
There are a number of ancillary drawings from the analysis of data, such as how entrepreneurial identifies are transformed through new learning, which represent instructive new insights on the dynamics of the incubation process. Chapter 8 presents a synthesis of findings where the authors have presented a mapping of the incubation process and its milestones and the process’s major contributions to entrepreneurial success; through entrepreneurial learning and opportunity development within a model of a ‘community of practice’. As far as I am aware, this conceptualization of incubators and the incubation process as a community of practice that consolidates and transforms entrepreneurial prior knowledge and new learning is truly novel. Chapter 9 presents implications for theorists and practitioners, areas for further research and contributions to theory in a concise and clear manner. For the new qualitative researcher, the reflexive researcher account in this chapter will be especially helpful in determining methodological risks and to improve preparedness to counter data collection and analysis challenges. Chapter 10 is an in-depth case history of the research site, and is a helpful guide to practitioners primarily who are looking to set up a community of practice based model of the incubation process.
I would recommend this book especially to doctoral students who will find it to be a helpful guide on how best to frame background theory, design a methodology, execute a research project and do justice in the presentation of the generated data – all for the purpose of generating meaningful outcomes.