How coaching services help early stage entrepreneurs: an exploration of gender differences

Abstract

PurposeEntrepreneurial support organizations, such as business incubators and accelerators (BIAs), provide coaching as a core element of their service offering for startups. Yet little is known about how coaching creates value from the entrepreneur's perspective. This is an important issue given that entrepreneurship is recognized as a gendered phenomenon. The purpose of this article is to explore how the coaching services provided during incubation create value for men and women entrepreneurs.Design/methodology/approachFocusing on university business incubators, our comparative qualitative study of 18 men and women entrepreneurs takes a grounded theorizing approach, and draws abductively on entrepreneurial learning theory, to explore the dimensions of coaching services that support venture development and explain gender differences.FindingsThe emergent explanatory model suggests that venture development is supported by coaching service design (at the incubator level) and by coaching content and rapport (at the entrepreneur-coach dyad level). Gender differences were observed in the emphasis placed on accessibility of coaching services provided by the incubator and the guidance provided by the coaches. We theorize that these findings reflect differences in entrepreneurial learning.Practical implicationsTo better support entrepreneurial learning, gender differences should be considered in both the design and delivery of coaching services.Originality/valueOur findings provide deeper insight about how coaching services create value for entrepreneurs by revealing explanatory dimensions at two levels of analysis and theorizing the interrelationship between entrepreneurial learning, gender and venture development.

The role of universities in fostering entrepreneurship: strategies and best practices

“…En esa línea, se refuerza que el papel de los mentores y el asesoramiento empresarial son invaluables en el fomento del espíritu emprendedor (Nicholls y Maxheimer, 2022b). Las universidades pueden establecer programas de mentoría donde emprendedores exitosos o profesionales con experiencia brinden orientación y asesoramiento a los estudiantes emprendedores por medio de su conocimiento, experiencias y contactos, y brindar orientación estratégica en el desarrollo e implementación de ideas empresariales.…”

“…La incorporación de cursos y programas de educación emprendedora en el currículo académico es esencial para dotar a los estudiantes de habilidades y conocimientos prácticos en emprendimiento (Ahmed et al, 2021); debiéndose incluir aspectos como la generación y evaluación de ideas de negocio, planificación estratégica, gestión financiera y comercialización. Además, se debe procurar brindar oportunidades de capacitación adicional, como talleres y programas de mentoría, para fortalecer las habilidades empresariales de los estudiantes (Nicholls et al, 2022b). En este apartado, Chan et al (2022) puntúan la no necesidad u obligatoriedad de trabajo presencial.…”

From business incubator to crucible: a new perspective on entrepreneurial support

“…Secondly, these studies examine the venture as the unit of analysis in order to draw implications about the benefits of incubation. However, recent work has established the importance of focusing on the incubated entrepreneur as the unit of analysis to gain richer insight into differences in the ability to benefit from incubation (Nicholls-Nixon and Maxheimer, 2022; Nicholls-Nixon et al. , 2022).…”

Comfortable but Not Brilliant: Exploring the Incubation Experience of Founders of Technology-Based Startups

“…Notwithstanding the extensive academic knowledge related to the business incubator industry, the contributions of the different typologies of incubators, and their economic and structural perspectives [5,16,17], numerous researchers call attention to the significant existing gap in the literature concerning qualitative studies focusing on the incubation experience itself from the perspective of incubated entrepreneurs [4,8,[18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25]. Paradoxically, this under-explored research area and the linked social and emotional aspects of daily-incubator life are identified as offering the greatest potential "to understand the process of incubation, as relatively little is known about the nature of these experiences and what it is like to be an incubatee" [26] (p. 42).…”

“…The extant literature on business incubators and their mechanisms reflects on their contribution and positive impact on the development of new businesses in general, which "may reflect an implicit assumption that belonging to an incubator is inherently beneficial" [21] (p. 4). Nevertheless, despite the identified significant literature gap concerning studies focusing on entrepreneurs' daily lived incubation life experience [4,8,[18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25], previous research encompassing this subject shed light on several aspects from a first-person viewpoint.…”