The Importance of Networks in a Business Incubation Programme in South Africa.

Business incubation is a concept that describes a business development process that is used to grow successful, sustainable entrepreneurial ventures that will contribute to the health and wealth of local, regional and national economies. Incubators provide a platform for businesses to build their foundations. However, the realities of global competition require an understanding on the local level of global markets and the complexities of interactions with multiple stakeholders along global supply chains. There is increasing evidence that the performance of existing enterprises is significantly improved by networking, especially for micro business entrepreneurs, and small and medium sized enterprise (SME) owners. However, with literature indicating the importance of business networks, there is still a gap in the illustration on how to connect and apply business networks to the different stages of a business incubation process. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is a preliminary attempt to deal with the phenomenon of business networks and their application to the different stages of an incubation programme. This conceptual study utilises the theory of business incubation that seeks to explain how business incubators and the process of business incubation increase the likelihood that new ventures will survive the early stages of development. The theory of business incubation has five different mutually exclusive incubation inputs, namely idea formulation, decision to proceed, resource gathering, launching of a new business and business development, as illustrated in Figure 1. Furthermore, the study concludes that given the theoretical analysis presented in this research paper a linkage can be created between the process of incubation and support measures available which then can create a further linkage on where in the business incubation process flow can internal and/or external business networks can be applied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]