Business Survival and the Influence of Innovation on Entrepreneurs in Business Incubators

Abstract

One of the objectives of this article is to study how innovation influences the results of entrepreneurs located in business incubators. The other objective is to examine how the training of entrepreneurs contributes to creating companies with high sustainability rates over time that are wealth generators in society. To achieve these objectives, entrepreneurs in business incubators in Spain were identified along with their level of training, their experience in business management, how much employment they have generated, their survival rate and the annual accounts (where economic, financial, and management information on the companies is collected). In turn, they were sent a questionnaire that allowed us to classify them by their degree of innovation. The techniques used are independent sample statistics that apply the Levene’s test, the analysis of the balance sheet, the income statements, and management indicators. This study concludes that, from the selected sample, 83.3% of the entrepreneurs established in business incubators in Spain have university training, and 64.2% prefer the branches of science, with 7.75 years of business experience, which favors business survival (100% in the seventh year of life) and the creation of qualified employment. All this favors the sustainability of the productive and business model which, being more intensive in knowledge and R&D, becomes more competitive in the market. On the other hand, there are no significant differences regarding the economic results, nor in the management indicators among the entrepreneurs of the incubators according to their degree of innovation. The value of research lies in the importance of studies on the relationship between innovation, training, and wealth-generating sustainability in incubators in today’s knowledge economy.

Is Innovation a Driver of Sustainability? An Analysis from a Spanish Region

“…So, this affirmed that innovation is a driver of social sustainability. These results are consistent with other studies that also find a positive relationship between social sustainability and innovation [81,83,91]. Although we have evaluated social sustainability based on the generation of employment, a more in-depth and complete evaluation will require more metrics that allow us to appreciate the company's contribution to the social sustainability of the territory.…”

“…The measurement variables in this case were based on the results, from the data provided in the annual accounts of the companies in relation to economic and financial profitability. The analyses confirmed the first hypothesis, the companies with an "Innovative SME" label generated higher economical and financial profitability and were, thus, significantly more economically sustainable, coinciding with the results achieved in other previous works [83,85,88]. In other words, innovation is a driver of SME's economical sustainability.…”

“…However, the posed hypotheses focus more on economic and social returns. The third and fourth hypotheses aim to go beyond the findings of Corsi et al [81] and Del Campo et al [83] by linking innovation and social responsiveness, insofar as firms take the dual consideration to make more economical and social profitability than those that are only considered innovative. Furthermore, the studies on which the first two hypotheses are based followed different methodologies, as explained in the next section.…”

“…Another notable work is that by Montégu et al [82], which found a correlation between competition and innovation after studying 1347 Chilean firms. Del Campo et al [83] studied whether firms located in incubators with more intense innovation strategies better performed, and were measured in terms of their sales revenue, growth, performance, economic and financial profitability than those firms not categorized as innovative and with weaker innovation strategies. They concluded "business incubators generate profitable companies that are sustainable over time, having entrepreneurs with extensive experience in management and high qualifications.…”

Great Minds Think Alike, Fools Seldom Differ: An Empirical Analysis of Opportunity Assessment in Technology Entrepreneurs

“…For example, while many support the proposition that entrepreneurs gain important insights from applicable prior experience [27,[53][54][55][56][57] others do not. On the one hand, empirical studies have shown that experience is associated with greater task performance, including forecasting ability [58][59][60] but on the other hand, such claims are disputed by those who argue against the benefit of experience, due to the heterogeneity across tasks limiting transferability of knowledge [61][62][63], the lack of task repeatability [64,65] and cognitive biases that may inhibit learning [30,[66][67][68].…”