Failure prevention and management in business incubation: practices towards a scalable business model

How support systems such as a business incubator deal with failure, a common phenomenon in new venture creation, is less understood. Employing a value creation perspective helps us to understand failure, the inability of an entrepreneurial team to build a scalable business model. Based on case studies at nine Swedish business incubators, we develop a dynamic process model towards understanding failure prevention and management in business incubation. We find business incubation practices towards failure prevention and management to be a mix of predictive and non-predictive strategies. These practices could help prevent and mitigate failure at personal, organisational and social levels towards value creation for the startups and their stakeholders and channel the effects of failure towards social benefit.