What Lies in ‘Business Incubation and SMEs’ Research? A Literature Review and Roadmap for Future Research

Abstract

The concept of ‘Business Incubation and SMEs’ has recently received a lot of interest in academic research and real-world business settings. Business incubator is a critical instrument for promoting entrepreneurial ecosystems and the growth of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Business incubation is a process that nurtures and promotes the growth of start-ups and early-stage companies. The aim of this article was to examine the existing literature on business incubators and SMEs in order to identify and highlight major as well as relevant themes and trends that can influence future research. The Scopus database was used to extract the data file. To develop network structures biblioshiny package of RStudio and VOSviewer was used. The results from the literature survey show some key observations highlight business incubators’ changing nature, challenges, and impact on economic and entrepreneurship development. In addition, SMEs can be better served if incubation programmes are tailored to specific industries or technologies, for this, governments should encourage the establishment of specialised incubation centres.