A systematic review of research and future research directions of the virtual business incubators

Abstract

Development of the Internet and the emergence of innovative ideas in this area increase the importance of supporting the virtual organizations. Virtual incubators are economic development tools that play an important role in developing of new businesses, particularly in the field of Internet. The aim of this research is establishing a comprehensive and accurate understanding of the new phenomenon of virtual incubators. For this purpose, in this paper a systematic review of previous research works in the field of virtual incubators are discussed by meta-synthesis method. This research is descriptive and fundamental. Qualitative and quantitative analysis of past research on the topics such as "Share of subjects", "Research Methods", “common theories” and "launch requirements" are discussed. Results indicate that largest share issue is allocated to the component of business model. The most dominant methods from the perspective of purpose, data collection and run are applied, the library and descriptive in virtual incubators area. Two theories have been seen in the past researches, include: Virtual organization and network theories. Environmental, organizational and technological requirements are three basic categories of requirements for launch and development of virtual incubators. In this paper, with composition and interpretation of previous studies and based on "concept mapping" we provided a conceptual framework for the development of researches in virtual incubators. This framework help to better understanding, improvement and covering the knowledge gap in this area for future research.

Keywords

• virtual business incubator
• meta-synthesis method
• concept mapping
• shannon entropy