Business Design & Innovation
Development of preincubation structures
Investigating pre-incubators as a mechanism to strengthen the valorization process of a university.
Creating impact on society
Universities are often at the basis of many interesting (technological) inventions of high societal and commercial value. One of the ambitions of the University of Antwerp is to create impact on society as an entrepreneurial university.
But every university is faced with the challenge of how to convert interesting research insights into impact. The development of pre-incubators is a new way of stimulating the valorization process. Despite the highly positive assessment of the first results of this new approach, we have limited knowledge about how pre-incubators work exactly and under which conditions this model can work.
Testing new ideas
Pre-incubators are environments in which new ideas can be tested for their commercial and societal value before they are included in the incubator. This project aims to investigate under which conditions pre-incubators can be implemented successfully within the ecosystem of the University of Antwerp.
The project is divided into three phases:
- Investigating the positioning and focus of the pre-incubators by, among others, screening the most important valorization domains within the UA.
- Investigating the positioning in the ecosystem by, among others, surveying different actors within the ecosystem.
- Investigating preincubation structures at other universities by means of, among others, surveys at various foreign universities.
Insights for successful implementation
The project will give the University of Antwerp the necessary insights to successfully implement and manage pre-incubators. This is in line with the objective to further grow as an entrepreneurial university and thus create impact on society.
Recommendations for the design, implementation and management of pre-incubators in the context of the ecosystem around the university have been created.
Register for our newsletter
Receive updates for the topic of your choice.
