Research on business accelerators

Abstract

In order to understand the genesis of business accelerators we must first look at the presence and impact of business incubators. Incubators worldwide have proven to be an important economic development tool. If we look at the impact and scale of incubators we find that since 1980, companies that have been incubated have created over 2,50,000 jobs. In 1980, only 12 incubators were present in the United States, however by 1995, this number increased to 600i. According to Bloomberg Business week, in 2011 around 110 business accelerator programs were operating around the world. In the same year in the United States alone, 50 accelerators took in around 500 start-up firms into their fold. About a decade ago it was estimated that worldwide, there were around 3000 incubators, even in developing countries like China, the number of business incubators is growing at a rapid pace. From 1991 to 2008, the number has been growing more than 15-fold, from 43 to 674 business incubatorsii. Also, research from China shows that start-up firms incubated in business incubators had a 70% chance of survival, which is much higher than in society. Same growth can be seen in Europe where in 2000, business incubators were creating around 30000 new jobs per annumi.