Towards small business development through business incubation programmes: a review

Abstract

The number of new indigenous business start-ups in Botswana has significantly increased during the past two decades. Unfortunately, the majority of them are not successful. Over 70% of new start-ups fail during their first 18 months. The general failure rate is over 80%, and only less than 2% of small businesses expand their businesses. It is noteworthy that this increased failure rate is substantially greater than the increase in the rate of new business creations. It is therefore essential to study the conditions that account for such a substantial rate of business failure and develop appropriate strategies to overcome the problems. The increasing rate of business failure has seen the emergence of several public policy approaches and assistance programs that attempt to improve the success rate of new businesses. One of the most intriguing of these is the Business Incubation Programmes (BIPs)... The purpose of this paper is to analyse why BIPs are critical for the development of all business and entrepreneurship and to put forward some suggestions on how BIPs can effectively be used for a proactive and sustainable entrepreneurial development.