ENTREPRENEURSHIP
an institution’s brand, as well as diversify the local economy by attracting grant and industry money as a side e ect. These facilities are useful for both student and sta ventures and provide an important part of the pipeline from idea to real-world venture in a protected environment. Given that many students are at a relatively early stage in their entrepreneurial projects, it might also be useful for institutions to o er a pre-incubator or pre-accelerator programme that focuses on skills and drop-in advice before students commit a lot of time and possibly money in pursuit of their business ideas. A dedicated multi-use enterprise space that all students can access for setting up meetings or receiving advice could be hugely bene cial, especially if it extends to projects that are currently small in scale or simple side hustles. This would help an institution cater for a larger number of students, focus on skills and the feasibility of individual business ideas and generate a pipeline of talent for its accelerator programme or incubator. Alliance Manchester Business School’s Masood Entrepreneurship Centre, for example, has an Enterprise Zone that o ers space for student ventures to work, drop-in sessions on practical business topics such as nance, intellectual property and marketing from external experts, as well as access to small seed funds. The space is also used for networking events, speaker events and demo days. Finally, consider the possibility of a student-run accelerator programme. These provide students with a great opportunity to boost their CVs – not only those who are interested in starting their own business, but also those who wish to pursue careers in consultancy or venture capital, for which experience in evaluating ventures and providing support is extremely valuable.
through an incubator have a ve-year survival rate of 87 per cent, as opposed to 44 per cent among those that have not. One negative that has been identi ed, however, is that they can prolong the existence of an unsound business that would not be able to survive in the real world, wasting nancial, physical and mental resources that could be used elsewhere on a project that is destined to fail. An individual incubator’s success, meanwhile, frequently derives from its selection criteria and these vary considerably between incubators. Sometimes, being local and tting an incubator’s existing specialisms are the only quali ers. In addition, selection criteria can be relaxed if the incubator needs to maintain a certain level of occupancy and this can result in lower-quality tenants and a higher failure rate. Certainly, an incubator’s size or length of establishment is not necessarily an indicator of tenant success and it can be especially hard to judge the merits of those housing biotech companies, as they require long periods of development time. One approach that works well is o ering accelerator programmes within incubator spaces. This can help cater for a wider range of ideas and stages of development, enabling ventures to accelerate once initial product development has taken place. Plus, incubators and accelerators are often part of wider associations that can learn from each other’s experiences, so the support on o er is continually evolving. Setting up support in higher ed When advising students or designing processes for the creation and development of incubators and accelerators, it’s important to emphasise the importance of settling on a well-de ned programme that has clear policies, procedures and milestones, as these can all contribute to success. It often works well if start-ups progress through a ltered funnel to a physical incubator, using a virtual incubator. This allows a coherent team and strategy to be formed before any payment commitments for physical space are made, which could increase the quality of tenants and help founders gain business skills. Providing the opportunity for graduating companies to move into a university science park, or similar, through a clear pipeline is also important, as graduating companies are a critical metric for the success of a university or business school incubator. Fruitful incubators can really help build
Robert Phillips is a senior lecturer in entrepreneurship at Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester. He teaches entrepreneurship to students from a variety of subject areas across the University of Manchester and runs several popular extracurricular activities centred on the topic. He holds a PhD in biochemistry and a master’s degree in biotechnology
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Business Impact ISSUE 1 2024
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