Business incubators and challenges: evidences from Pakistan

Abstract

Even though there has been an emergent interest in business incubation programs due to the copious benefits imitative from such programs, the program continues to experience an array of different challenges. This paper sought to investigate and identify the various challenges facing business incubators (BI’s) in the effort to provide much needed support to their business clients. The study employed a qualitative research approach in collecting the research data. This entailed the use of interviews designed to gather relevant data on both the concept as well as understanding of business incubators. The study employed unstructured personal interviews in collecting in-depth data from respondents sampled from the business incubators in Pakistan. One of the criteria for selecting the research participants for this study was that they would be part of a business incubation program. Therefore, they were selected from a database of a local organization that has a reputation of stimulating the evolution of small and medium enterprises (SME’s) in Pakistan. As a result, the study identified four business incubators that meet the main criteria for participation in the study. The research results indicated that in over a period of 5 years an average of 25 local entrepreneurs had graduated from the business incubation program. Moreover, some of the major challenges of business incubators identified included; the lack of advanced and proper ICT facilities, the shortage of sponsorship initiatives for entrepreneurs, insufficient production space for facilitating BI programs as well as the failure of BI’s to expand to different locations due to financial constraints.