Graduate Entrepreneurship Incubation Environments

Abstract

The benchmarking framework developed in this study is specifically designed for higher education institutions to consider when developing environments to encourage entrepreneurship among their students, graduates and staff. The objective of the study was to identify key success factors of Graduate Entrepreneurship Incubator Environments (GEIEs) that nurture, encourage and promote entrepreneurship in higher education. Semi-structured interviews with stakeholders in five leading UK entrepreneurial universities were used to collect data on GEIEs. The framework is a non-prescriptive tool which can be used by universities as a practical mechanism for plotting and monitoring progress towards an enabling environment for entrepreneurial graduates.