Business Incubation Centres in Universities and Their Role in Developing Entrepreneurial Ecosystem

Given the potential of start-ups in wealth creation in an economy, universities can play a leading role in the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Our article focuses on the need to provide a strong impetus for establishing business incubation centres at universities for progressive creation of innovation start-ups. The study reviews the current status of business incubators affiliated with universities in India. It also explores the variables such as location, affiliation and ease of doing business which help facilitate innovation and entrepreneurship. An ontological perspective of objectivism whereby universities are seen to play a role in not just generation of knowledge but also in the development of an ecosystem where the knowledge is transferred to initiate new ventures is considered for the study. Based on the entire population of universities in India; 937 universities were considered for the study through the websites, and an analysis of the coherent and incoherent activities of these incubation centres was performed to check for the presence of entrepreneurship-related activities. Also, the ease of doing business rankings were mapped to assess whether they played a role in stimulating the setup of incubators.