The Library
The development of customised support framework to guide tailored support for business incubators
Tools
Mongkolkittaveepol, Phavika (2022) The development of customised support framework to guide tailored support for business incubators. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.
|
PDF
WRAP_Theses_Mongkolkittaveepol_2022.pdf - Submitted Version - Requires a PDF viewer. Download (13Mb) | Preview |
Official URL: http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b385170
Abstract
Lack of skills and poor team management are found to be critical reasons for start-up failure. Even though incubators play a vital role in improving team capabilities, the failure rates for new businesses are still largely unaffected. Academics have postulated that this is because incubators may offer support that does not align with the real needs of start-ups. Prominent scholars suggest that different start-ups have different support needs due to their capability and current state of the team. Tailored support for start-ups, offered by incubators, was found to be an essential contributor to start-up achievement. However, research on developing a customised support framework for business incubators has received much less attention in the existing research studies.
The purpose of this study is, therefore, to propose an Incubator Customised Support framework that helps diagnose the team and skills gap at the current stage of a start-up’s journey. This was achieved through three key phases. Firstly, from the relevant current literature on best practices for start-ups, a conceptual framework that captures the stages, distinct key achievements, processes, critical skills and team effectiveness factors needed within each development stage was synthesised. Secondly, through semi-structured interviews and observations conducted with 13 incubators located internationally, the conceptual framework was tested and refined to produce a framework that incorporated and addressed current practice issues. This was labelled, the ICS Framework. Finally, this study then investigated how the international ICS framework can be modified to suit different start-up ecosystems, taking Thailand as a case example, through a series of semistructured interviews with 16 Thai incubators.
The research findings suggest that the ICS Framework could adapt directly to a local international context, as the critical processes, achievement, and overall team development factors are consistent. However, this does require some adaptation as the priority within crucial team development factors can vary depending on the start-up’s background, and the strength of the start-up ecosystem in a particular country. This study found a possible correlation between the findings from the semistructured interviews at sample Thai incubators and the start-up ecosystem performance data supplied by the Start-up Genome report. The findings from Thai incubator correlate with the Genome report emphasis on the level of “global market reach” capability, funding structure and previous start-up experience with practice at Thai incubators. This correlation could simplify the adaption of the international ICS Framework into any local context radically.
This study contributes to the advancement of business incubator research. It has formulated a novel Incubator Customised Support framework that can be used to guide incubators in assessing startups’ support needs, and a means to tailor their support, based on multi-factor assessment of critical skills and team effectiveness factors importance weightings, at each stage of a start-up journey. A key factor through the factor weightings is knowing what the key ability is required to proceed to the next stage. This study proposes that national versions of the ICS framework could be created using updated “Start-up Genome data”, as demonstrated by the Thai modification demonstrated in this research. However, this approach needs further research to be more comprehensively validated.
Item Type: | Thesis (PhD) | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor |
||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Business incubators, New business enterprises, Entrepreneurship, Industrial management | ||||
Official Date: | February 2022 | ||||
Dates: |
|
||||
Institution: | University of Warwick | ||||
Theses Department: | Warwick Manufacturing Group | ||||
Thesis Type: | PhD | ||||
Publication Status: | Unpublished | ||||
Supervisor(s)/Advisor: | Bal, Jay ; Ma, Xiao | ||||
Format of File: | |||||
Extent: | ix, 259 leaves : illustrations | ||||
Language: | eng |
Request changes or add full text files to a record
Repository staff actions (login required)
View Item |
Downloads
Downloads per month over past year