START-UP AND ESTABLISHED ORGANISATIONS’ REQUIREMENTS FROM UNIVERSITY BUSINESS INCUBATORS

Abstract

In South Africa, small organisations contribute to the sustainability and growth of the economy through stimulating entrepreneurial activity, job creation, poverty alleviation and the general improvement of living standards. However, these small organisations face various challenges relating to inadequate capital, increasing competition, legislations and market expansions. University business incubators (UBIs), which have proven to be successful worldwide, are organisations that have been developed to support small organisations to overcome the challenges they face during their start-up and growth phases, when they are most vulnerable to business failure. The goal of UBIs is to offer incubation programmes, which include a variety of services ranging from physical facilities, general business services, management services, networking and professional services, financial consulting services and university services to support both start-up and established organisations. The purpose of this study was to determine the difference between start-up and established organisations’ service offering requirements from UBIs in order to tailor the service offerings of UBIs. A descriptive research design was followed, whereby a non-probability judgment sample of 108 small service organisations (SSOs) situated in the Vaal Triangle region of South Africa was taken. A structured self-administered questionnaire, containing the various UBI service offerings, was distributed to the owners or managers of the SSOs. The statistical analysis of the collected data included descriptive statistics and a two independent-samples t-test. The findings of this study suggest that while there is no statistically significant difference between start-up and established organisations’ physical facilities, general business service, networking and professional service, financial consulting service and university service requirements from UBIs, statistically significant differences were found concerning management service requirements. As such, UBIs should tailor their service offerings and develop unique marketing strategies to target start-up and established organisations.

Keywords

• University business incubators, small organisations, start-up organisations, established organisations, services