IMIB Journal of Innovation and Management

What Lies in ‘Business Incubation and SMEs’ Research? A Literature Review and Roadmap for Future Research

Vaishali Dhiman¹ and Manpreet Arora¹

First Published 16 May 2024. https://doi.org/10.1177/jinm.241245806

Article Information

Corresponding Author:

Vaishali Dhiman, HPKV Business School, School of Commerce and Management Studies, Central University of Himachal Pradesh, Dharamshala, Kangra, Himachal Pradesh 176215, India.
Email: Cuhp18rdmgmt13@hpcu.ac.in

¹HPKV Business School, School of Commerce and Management Studies, Central University of Himachal Pradesh, Dharamshala, Kangra, Himachal Pradesh, India

Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-Commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed.

Abstract

The concept of ‘Business Incubation and SMEs’ has recently received a lot of interest in academic research and real-world business settings. Business incubator is a critical instrument for promoting entrepreneurial ecosystems and the growth of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Business incubation is a process that nurtures and promotes the growth of start-ups and early-stage companies. The aim of this article was to examine the existing literature on business incubators and SMEs in order to identify and highlight major as well as relevant themes and trends that can influence future research. The Scopus database was used to extract the data file. To develop network structures biblioshiny package of RStudio and VOSviewer was used. The results from the literature survey show some key observations highlight business incubators’ changing nature, challenges, and impact on economic and entrepreneurship development. In addition, SMEs can be better served if incubation programmes are tailored to specific industries or technologies, for this, governments should encourage the establishment of specialised incubation centres.

Keywords

Business incubation, SMEs, innovation, start-ups, entrepreneurship

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