A Brief Look at Incubators in Canada
At the Canadian Association of Business Incubators 11th annual conference in May this year, Lawrence Hewick, CEO of Ontario Business Incubators and a Programme Mentor at the Hamilton Incubator of Technology in Ontario, briefly summarised the history of the Canadian Incubator industry.
In the early 1980s incubators were run as business centres. Later in the same decade, they adopted a warehouse model with a focus on the rejuvenation of buildings. Early in the next decade, the 1990s, Canadians incubators reverted to the traditional model of providing space to incumbents, while towards the end of that decade incubators started using a technology model where focus was on making funds available to develop new technologies. In the new millennium, this again changed to adopting a new economy model that focuses on knowledge workers and knowledge management.
According to Hewick, the characteristics of a new economy model include the engagement of the private sector such as the venture capitalists, creating jobs and not only profits, generating income from rent and not merely from equity or royalties, and providing entrepreneurs with space and mentorship as opposed to money and technology, as was the focus of the technology model.
Worldwide the numbers of incubators are:
| USA, Canada, Australia |
1000 |
|
| South America |
200 |
|
| Western Europe |
900 |
|
| Eastern Europe |
150 |
|
| Far East |
600 |
|
| Africa and Middle East |
150 |
(mainly in India) |
| Approx total |
3 000 |
|
Of these, only 10% of the publicly funded incubators subscribe to the new economy model, while 5% are funded by venture capital and 10% by industry, and 5% have adopted a virtual model for incubation.
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