Easy Biz: Business Incubator/Accelerator Website
Abstract
In 1959, the first business incubator opened in New York. It was designed to “provide business assistance services to early stage companies” (Salmon Valley, 2011). Though the concept took a couple decades to really see success, business incubation has grown significantly to become a major tool for aspiring entrepreneurs to get the robust knowledge and expertise they need to hit the ground running. There are currently “about 5,000 incubator businesses in the world” (Info Dev, 2007). They tend to be widely supported for their work in stimulating the economy and encouraging innovation. Around 2000, “a new concept appeared [...], business accelerators” (Ryzhonkov, 2013). A business accelerator is typically used when “start-ups have moved beyond the earliest stages of getting established” (BDC, 2018). The combination of both business incubators as well as business accelerators are employed in order to see a business or idea through its adolescence stage and into a fully functional company.