Business incubation and sustainable enterprises: an explorative study of current trends and emerging scenarios

This research is based on the growing interest in business incubation Practices that promote the adoption of sustainable business opportunities. It explores the Processes and instruments utilized by business incubations programs in order to transfer sustainability principles among aspiring entrepreneurs and startups. The study utilized a qualitative approach to collect data to gain in-depth knowledge and understandings about three incubation case studies aiming at sustainable business creation and development. The data were collected using unstructured in-depth interviews to business incubation managers for each case study. Particular attention was given to the criteria for business idea selection and the main tools in use during the incubation and acceleration process. Startups and the sustainable value they propose were considered as the main output of the incubation stage. A new model of incubation based on sustainable value proposition was then proposed to complement previous conceptual frameworks. This new model, is multi-sectorial, and benefits from an intense stakeholders' and partnerships' contribution in cooperative and collaborative practices to find economically viable entrepreneurial solutions. To be sustainable solutions must balance socially responsible, culturally attentive, territorially focused and environmentally respectful practices in their value proposition. Those dimensions of sustainability capture potential stakeholder's value that will need to be measured in future researches to assess the performance of sustainable and responsible investments.