Evolution and Distribution of Business Incubators: A Literature Review

This review paper explores the ways business incubators evolved historically and their current geographic distribution in the global landscape. The study aims to understand the big picture of the incubation industry to facilitate informed decision-making by different stakeholders such as founders, universities, governments, and incubation leaders. Drawing on the available information from all continents, this paper highlights the growing prevalence of incubators in all the continents. This study used academic journals, government and industry reports, and other credible sources to understand incubators' evolution and global expansion, geographic distribution, development of newer phenomena such as virtual and focused incubators, and comparison between developed and developing economies’ perspectives. The findings from extant literature suggest that the incubators that originated in the 1950s have proliferated to more than 10,000 institutions globally, with higher concentrations in North America, Europe, and Asia. The findings also uncover several potential gaps for conducting further research in this field.