29 Jun A Common Methodological Framework to Support Business Initiatives: Pre-Incubation, Incubation And Acceleration
The main objective of the RAISE Youth Project is to pilot and promote an innovative RAISE Model of (self)employment, for youth NEETs in rural regions of EU. But, what can we do to support these business activities? What are the different resources and facilities young entrepreneurs can use in their territory to support their own business? There are several resources entrepreneurs can use when planning and implementing their business idea, depending on the stage they currently are. A common methodological framework divides the different stages of the development of a business into three well defined categories: pre-incubation, incubation and acceleration.
The pre-incubation of a business is the period of time where entrepreneurial ideas are pre-filtered for market viability in a risk-reduced environment. This way we can avoid greater costs and failures when developing and implementing our own business model and we can learn from our own experience and from those of others before starting our business activities.
The incubation is a process where an individual or organization, called business incubators, supports the establishment and growth of an initiative. These incubators support the entrepreneurs and evaluates their viability before supporting the business projects and start funneling funds into them. To sum up, business incubators help initiatives to manage finances and ensure proper utilization of the money, making the basis of these initiatives strong and scalable.
Finally, a business accelerator is a program that gives developing companies access to mentorship, investors and other support that help them grow and become more stable, self-sufficient businesses. Usually, the projects and initiatives that use this kind of programs are those that are more or less consolidated, have funds to develop their business activity but need some guidance and support to strengthen their capacity and to develop even more. These business accelerators are the next step for those initiatives that have participated in the incubation process but still need support and guidance.
Once these three concepts have been cleared, we are one step closer to understand the whole entrepreneurial business process and what are the different stages a business can go through before being fully released in the market. In this regard, FUNDECYT-PCTEX is developing a full comprehensive methodology for the pre-incubation, incubation and acceleration of entrepreneurial pilot projects for young NEETs participants. This way, it is expected that the success rate of these new business activities will rise, thus promoting the creation of new business and increasing the employment rates in rural areas.