Business incubator effectiveness in facilitating entrepreneurial accesses and the impact on incubator client firm sustainability and profitability

The purpose of this research is to determine the correlation between eight identified entrepreneurial accesses as provided by business incubators with the return on investment experienced by incubator resident firms. The entrepreneurial accesses range from the technical (access to technology and capital), to the behavioral (access to networks), to the knowledgeable (access to training). The access to training is anticipated to emerge as the prominent access in the success of entrepreneurial firms. Therefore, the literature review explores entrepreneurship against a backdrop of both classical political economy theories as well as the major philosophical schools of learning. A test instrument was designed to collect both perception responses and return on investment data from chief executive officers of firms residing in National Business Incubator Association (NBIA) member facilities. Descriptive methods were used to assess associations between the variables of perception and company profitability.