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

Year 2017, Volume: 9 Issue: 2, 200 - 213, 01.06.2017

Rita Klonaridis Natasha De Klerk

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