Business incubator A business incubator is an organization that helps startup companies and individual entrepreneurs to develop their businesses by providing a fullscale range of services, starting with management training and office space, and ending with venture ...

s began in the 1950s and took off in the late 1990s as support for

startup companies A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an Entrepreneurship, entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship includes all new businesses including self-employment and businesses tha ...

who need advice and venture capital to get their ideas off the ground. As the

dot-com bubble The dot-com bubble (or dot-com boom) was a stock market bubble that ballooned during the late-1990s and peaked on Friday, March 10, 2000. This period of market growth coincided with the widespread adoption of the World Wide Web and the Interne ...

burst, many

high-tech High technology (high tech or high-tech), also known as advanced technology (advanced tech) or exotechnology, is technology that is at the cutting edge: the highest form of technology available. It can be defined as either the most complex or ...

business incubators did so too. Today, the model of a business incubator is changing. Several of the incubator companies who survived the dot-com bubble switched to a virtual model. A definition of a virtual incubator is provided by IdeaGist as: ''In a broader sense, virtual incubators can be defined as a catalyst for socio-economic development, providing a process for developing early stage ideas into viable ventures.'' They offer formal and informal learning opportunities and connect entrepreneurs to an ecosystem of related services. While virtual incubators are still getting defined in a fast-changing world, they have a potential of disrupting the traditional business incubation model. The traditional incubator model requires a startup venture to set up shop at the incubator's site. The virtual model, on the other hand, allows a company to garner the advice of an incubator without physically being located at the incubator site. This new model suits those entrepreneurs who need the advice an incubator offers but still want to maintain their own offices, warehouses, etc. One example of a fully virtual incubator is th
One Million by One Million
initiative. Several state and local governments in the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

are working with or creating their own virtual business incubators to attract new business. Higher Education institutions such as

Auburn University Auburn University (AU or Auburn) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Auburn, Alabama, United States. With more than 26,800 undergraduate students, over 6,100 post-graduate students, and a tota ...

and

Springfield Technical Community College Springfield Technical Community College (STCC, Stick) is a public technical college in Springfield, Massachusetts. It is the only technical community college in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Located on the site of the Springfield Armory N ...

are now offering virtual business incubation of some kind, with most of them offering a big library of resources, and some even offering the use of physical facilities. A global list of current and past virtual incubators is published by IdeaGist with 80 entries but many of them are either defunct or not offering virtual incubation services.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Virtual Business Incubator Business incubators Types of organization

See also

References