Business incubators as tools for creative cluster development

Business incubators are considered important contributors to innovation, as they foster and support entrepreneurship. Incubators, nurturing creative start-ups, may also function as ancillary activities in spatially concentrated creative clusters. Furthermore, an incubator itself may even function as, or be the centre of a cluster. Such incubators may actively encourage start-up entrepreneurs to cooperate, thus creating a cluster-like project ecology. This chapter provides researchers and policymakers with a framework of the potential roles of incubators in the development of creative clusters. These can be found mainly in four areas. First, incubators may provide hard infrastructure or enable the use of hard infrastructure such as old, derelict buildings, hence avoiding waste of useful spaces. Second, incubators may act as mediator between incubatees and the primary and secondary activities in the cluster. Third, incubators can contribute to a soft infrastructure containing factors such as liveliness, image, buzz and social networks, which may increase the performance of creative clusters. Finally, incubators contribute to the agglomeration economies that are considered crucial for geographical concentration, by constituting a more diverse labour pool and by fostering cooperation and coordination of activities and other spillovers between firms.