Empirical Evidence on Business Incubators' Role in Strengthening Entrepreneurship – A Comparative Study Italy vs. Romania

Abstract

In this paper, the aim is to understand what are the operational objectives of the incubators from Italy and Romania and what indicators have been chosen to measure the efficiency of the services provided. In the analysis of the incubation process, we tried to detect the degree of involvement of the incubator in the most important phases of the incubation process and to qualify the time of the incubation process by analyzing the main reasons for leaving the start-up in the incubation cycle. Comparative findings of this cross-country research reveal how much the incubator takes an operational and pragmatic approach in its incubation programs and to understand the level of importance given to the definition of the service product, offering valuable insights to developing the models and scenarios defined in Business-Model-Canvas.