Out Wall Business Incubation: Higher Education Perspective

Abstract

Out wall business incubation (OWBI) refers to the business incubation process which provides facilities and services, but the small-business entities (SBE)tenants-remain on their own place outside the incubator. This model is very suitable for the SBE which located nearby market area, while the business incubator has limited space to share. This article describes the perspective of higher education on OWBI and pros and cons in term of incubator business establishment in higher education. Applying a simple SWOT on Bakrie University's business incubator (named UBpreneur) as a case study shows that, OWBI gives positive impact in providing opportunity for those SBE (prominently freshmen students). The main strength of this system is in the flexibility of the freshmen students to choose their partners and to manage their ideas independently. While the typical weakness of OWBI tenant is that they keep changes the ideas and easily change their business plan direction. For the threat aspects, OWBI system has difficulties in its monitoring process due to tenant's movement. UBpreneur evaluates tenants every six months. The tenants will be categorized as developed tenant (ready to leave the incubator) if after three years consecutive evaluation tenants are considered ready to compete independently in the free market. UBpreneur recorded that only 2-5 % of the total tenants successfully pass the three years evaluation. However, the knowledge transfers during incubation among OWBI, tenants, experts mentors and potential customers are considered intensive.