Business Media Articles (Archived)

Calls to pull the plug on business incubators

Summary

There are around 250 incubators across the country according to UK Business Incubation - a successful enterprise in its own right. Some of those appear to have been established, without clear guidelines or targets, simply because government or European money was found that was earmarked for such projects.

Article

In Field of Dreams - a typical schmaltzy US film in which cash-strapped farmer Kevin Costner was told if he built a baseball field "they would come". They being former stars of the past and in their wake thousands of spectators who would pay good money to see them and so stave off foreclosure on his homestead.

Truly the stuff of dreams. But the same approach is being taken by quangos charged with promoting enterprise up and down the country, according to one ex-government adviser anyway.

Walter Herriot, managing director of St John's Innovation Centre, who received an OBE in 1999 for services to business, calls the approach taken by the nine Regional Development Agencies (RDA) "arse about face".

"They have gone for the physical infrastructure without understanding the networking that needs to be in place for these things to be truly successful," he complains.

He has an ally in Jon Moulton of venture capitalists Alchemy who believes that a lot of concerns that receive RDA support have "not got a prayer" of succeeding.

It appears the government is caught between a rock and a hard place - damned if it isn't seen to be supporting new businesses and damned for attempting to do so.

There are around 250 incubators across the country according to UK Business Incubation - a successful enterprise in its own right.

Some of those appear to have been established, without clear guidelines or targets, simply because government or European money was found that was earmarked for such projects.

Pumping government money into bricks and mortar and calling it an enterprise centre is disingenuous. The leaders of these business incubators must be reminded that they are there to create businesses - not boast about buildings that may or may not be sustainable long term, critics argue.

Enterprise is not something that can be taught in-house. There are certain skills that can only be honed from being out in the market with your customers, supplier and financiers, not to mention that business opportunities that only often arise through networking.

There is a place for incubators - they do offer access to expertise and cut through some red tape that prevents some new business from being still born. But, according to some, they are not an end in themselves.


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