Analysis of Absorptive Capacity: a Study in Business Incubators in the State of Santa Catarina

This study aims to understand how the incubators in Santa Catarina – CELTA, MIDITEC, SOFTVILLE, INOVAPARQ, Instituto GENE, CRIE, INCHTECh – support their incubated companies in absorbing external knowledge for their innovative efforts in products and services. This research is characterized as a multiple case study of a descriptive nature with a qualitative approach. Semi-structured interviews are conducted with incubator managers and explored through content analysis based on Zahra and George’s (2002) absorptive capacity theory categories: acquisition, assimilation, transformation, and exploitation. It is concluded that the incubators present four practices supporting incubated companies in the acquisition of external knowledge, eight practices in the assimilation of knowledge, seven practices in the transformation of knowledge, and five practices in the exploitation of knowledge. A comparative assessment of incubator practices ranks them as follows, in descending order: MIDI Tecnológico, CELTA, INOVAPARQ, SOFTVILLE, with CRIE, INCTECh, and Instituto GENE tied in score.