University Business Incubator (UBI) Index, a European research initiative established to assist incubators around the world to become more efficient and competitive, has published a report warning that university business incubators in the UK are in danger of becoming sausage factories.
Dhruv Bhatli, co-founder, UBI Index, said: “Sadly the industry is leaning towards a “sausage factory” approach. Incubation is undergoing tremendous change and only entrepreneur-centric incubation programmes are going to survive. Unless incubators understand that each start-up is different and has distinct requirements, they will never be able to help start-ups achieve their full potential.”
The 70-page report says that the industry is leaning towards a prescriptive approach to incubators rather than treating each start-up as unique. This, the report says, could limit the chances of some promising companies.
SetSquared, an enterprise collaboration between five leading research-intensive universities, Bath, Bristol, Exeter, Southampton and Surrey, was praised and used as a model of best practice in the report. Formed in 2002, SetSquared runs business incubation centres at all five universities and over the last 11 years has helped over 1000 high-tech start-up attract more than £1.2bn ($2bn).
Dhruv Bhatli went on to say: “That’s where SetSquared is different – it adapts its offer to fit the entrepreneurs, which is unique and the only way to avoid the “one-size-fits-all” approach.”
Karen Brooks, Project Director at SetSquared, said: “At SetSquared we are not prescriptive with any of our companies, since all of them have very different needs and are in different situations. Our job is to identify those needs and build a customised programme to provide them maximum assistance.”
SetSquared is ranked as joint best incubator in Europe and fourth best globally in the UBI Index.
