Business incubators: new mechanism for economic/enterprise development or passing fad? Exploring complex relationship of the growing phenomenon in the context of Scotland

Business incubation facilities continue to proliferate around the world as governments and institutions seek to derive suggested economic and social benefits, but whether incubators 'add value' translated into the national/regional assets including intellectual capital, remains a vexed question. We contribute to this debate by considering the relationships between incubator outputs, investor objectives and managerial perceptions of the role of incubation in Scottish business incubators. We develop a novel analysis of the portability and tangibility of incubator outputs in the course of our discussion. Case study and interview evidence indicate that a 'multiple investor' model predominates in Scotland; that different investors' objectives are frequently either prima facie or potentially incongruent; and that managers adopt a variety of strategies to deal with incongruities with consequent implications for business incubators' outputs. We discuss the relevance of our approach for the evaluation of business incubation and the implications of our analysis for policy makers.