Abstract

Business incubators and entrepreneurship centers are essential tool of economic and social development. This mix method research examined and described the effectiveness of business incubators and entrepreneurship centers as supporting mechanism for economic and social development. The research investigated the impact of business incubators and entrepreneurship centers on mainly combined revenue, regional per capita GDP, and regional unemployment rate in 40 states. The quantitative data was collected by InBIA and UCF in a period of 42 months. 206 of business incubators and entrepreneurship centers responded to a lengthy survey that contains 123 questions. Moreover, 20 semi-structured interviews were conducted with business incubator managers to collect the qualitative data that compliment the quantitative data. The research was design into three main phases: conceptual phase, operational phase, and conclusion. Eisenhart (1989) building theories from case study research approach was applied to this research. The quantitative data was analyzed by using SmartPLS4 which adopted multiple liner regression. QDA Miner Lite software was used to analyze the qualitative data. The result showed that there are significant impact of business incubators and entrepreneurship centers on incubated companies combined revenue and regional per capita GDP. Whereas the effect of business incubators and entrepreneurship centers was not proofed.

Notes

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Graduation Date

2023

Semester

Spring

Advisor

O'Neal, Thomas

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

College

College of Engineering and Computer Science

Department

Industrial Engineering and Management Systems

Degree Program

Industrial Engineering

Identifier

CFE0009867; DP0028144

URL

https://purls.library.ucf.edu/go/DP0028144

Language

English

Release Date

November 2028

Length of Campus-only Access

5 years

Access Status

Doctoral Dissertation (Campus-only Access)

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Restricted to the UCF community until November 2028; it will then be open access.

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