The Current State of Canadian and Ottawa Business Incubators
Business incubation has been identified as a means of meeting a variety of economic and socioeconomic policy needs, which may include:
- Creating jobs and wealth
- Fostering a community’s entrepreneurial climate
- Technology commercialization
- Diversifying local economies
- Building or accelerating growth of local industry clusters
- Business creation and retention
- Encouraging women or minority entrepreneurship
- Identifying potential spin-in or spin-out business opportunities
- Community revitalization
Business incubators typically provide a range of services to clients that may include:
- Help with business basics
- Networking activities
- Marketing assistance
- High-speed Internet access
- Help with accounting/financial management
- Access to bank loans, loan funds and guarantee programs
- Help with presentation skills
- Links to higher education resources
- Links to strategic partners
- Access to angel investors or venture capital
- Comprehensive business training programs
- Advisory boards and mentors
- Management team identification
- Help with business etiquette
- Technology commercialization assistance
- Help with regulatory compliance
- Intellectual property management
- Facilities (e.g. office space, specialized lab space) and associated business services (e.g. security, receptionist, meeting rooms, phone service, photocopiers, printers, internet service)
Stats Canada released a report in late 2008 “The Business of Nurturing Businesses” which takes a look at business incubators in Canada based on survey data taken in 2005. Some key findings from the report include:
- Almost all business incubators are sponsored by economic development organizations, governments, academic institutions, i.e. tax money
- 1 in 6 incubators offer facilities and on-site support services
- Almost half of all incubators were focused on professional, scientific and technical services businesses
- The top three most used services of incubators were: legal consultation, management guidance and assistence in obtaining financing
There are various lists of incubators in Canada, unfortunately none up-to-date, including:
In Ottawa, we have the following business incubators:
- Communications Research Innovation Centre – on-site facilities
- NRC Industry Partnership Facility (NRC-IPF)
- Ontario Centres of Excellence Centre for Commercialization of Research - announced in Nov 2008
- NRCan Innovation Acceleration Centre - being phased out
- The Code Factory – private incubator, which works closely with Carleton University’s Talent First Network
- OCRI Innovation Accellerator - regional economic development agency, with on-site facilities and a wide range of services
- Carleton University’s Tony Bailetti
Unfortunately, with the exception of Carleton University’s Tony Bailetti, there is little/no information available on the public incubators relative to return on investment of the tax money in the operation of the incubators – which would lead me to believe that compelling results do not exist.
From the perspective of efficiency, it appears that our tax money is being spent a bit recklessly relative to overlapping mandates and services. The Ontario government and Ottawa Municipal government have both being doing a review of how they are funding and delivering their economic development programs. I hope that as part of this review, they look towards stronger collaboration and reduced overlap of services between Provincial and Municipal programs.
A future blog entry will examine how business incubators role will evolve/change in the context of Business Ecosystems.
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