A Process Based Model of Business Incubator in Systems Engineering Terms

Business incubators (BI), accelerators (BA) and science parks (SP) are widely recognized as ways of fostering innovation and help economy growth. This paper presents a functional model describing their operation (although with a focus on BI), identifying the points of need/provision of information as necessary to support decision-making for the management and monitoring of the system efficiency and effectiveness. The proposed model may also help planning the functioning and structure of BI / BA specific Information Management System (IMS) focused on data provision for strategy and decision support. The proposed approach is aligned with the intent to maximise process efficiency and effectiveness in supporting residents as well as granting them all the functionalities of a large corporate IMS while attending the program, additionally, it offers the possibility to generate extra income by providing alumni with IMS services at cost (thus creating a new model of BI / BA which operates also as a service provider).