M. Tech. Organisational Leadership / Over the past few decades, increasing attention has been paid to the contribution of Universities of Technology towards advancing the frontiers of science and technology. However, such research is descriptive and lacks a theoretical framework. Relying on the resource-based theory and incubation models, the present research is concerned with proposing a theoretical framework for the enabling factors that influence the graduation of new technology-based firms that result from the commercialisation of research and technology through to becoming established businesses from university technology business incubators. This framework is being proposed with two major objectives in mind. The first is to identify the main enabling factors that influence the graduation of new technology-based firms within university technology business incubators, which may provide a base for university stakeholders to design an appropriate incubation programme aimed at timely and successful graduation of new technology-based firms. The second is to link the development of business ideas to enabling factors that influence their progression into graduate businesses, which may provide a better understanding of how university incubation aspects work, providing theoretical insights into the incubation process of new technology-based firms. In the theoretical framework, a number of enabling factors were identified as components of the incubation process, namely stringent selection and admission criteria, administrative and legal policies, access to financial resources, access to university entrepreneurial network/mediation, and access to organisational resources and business support services. The most significant finding of the research is that there are a number of enabling factors that influence the graduation of new technology-based firms within university technology business incubators, the most significant of which are stringent selection and admission criteria, the business support services, financial resources, university entrepreneurial network/ mediation and organisational resources. Each of these factors is grouped into three stages: the pre incubation stage, the incubation stage and the graduation stage.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:tut/oai:encore.tut.ac.za:d1001229 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Sithole, Nkosinathi. |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format |
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