7: University Incubators and Accelerators

For a university, the incubator can be for alumni or students. Running this type of incubator can be different than a freestanding one. This chapter provides some advice for university administrators wishing to buildtheir community engagement using an incubator.

This chapter discusses why a university might consider supporting an incubator. We prefer to discuss this as a university issue rather than a B-school issue for several reasons. First, we know that innovation can come from engineering, science, and IT areas that can be rapidly monetized and intellectually protected. Second, the number of entrepreneurs in the younger generations is very high and many are working in the social sciences and economics areas with their innovations. Third, while business students may be great at financing and the business side, they often need help from other disciplines to execute their ideas. Universities are fertile ground for exciting new ideas, young entrepreneurs with high energy, and funding from a wide variety of sources. Hosting an incubator pulls all these factions together and ultimately can result in better outcomes for the whole institution in fund raising, intellectual property, grants, and recruiting. Education can also be enhanced when students do internships or work as consultants for the member companies.