BUSINESS INCUBATORS IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC: WELL SPENT MONEY?

The purpose of this study is to analyze business incubators in the Czech Republic using publicly available data. Business incubators are used worldwide to support the creation and development of entrepreneurial ventures. In the Czech Republic, there have been many incubators set up in the last decade, seen due to the influx of EU funds. Surprisingly, there is no general list of incubators. This study offers the first overview of business incubators in the Czech Republic. Due to the unstable terminology regarding business incubators, we took the support of new entrepreneurial activity as a defining characteristic of business incubators and listed organizations that offer this kind of service. The result of our study is a list of 51 institutions that offer support to new companies or teams with ideas. This support takes various forms from office rentals to funding. The highest number of places are in Prague and the majority have been financed from EU funds. There are 21 publicly owned, 23 privately owned and 7 private and public jointly owned organizations. Nearly eighty percent of incubators offer office space rentals. The results show that business incubators in the Czech Republic are different and we need to start monitoring their performance to understand their added value, not only for the incubated companies, but also for the economy as a whole. It is surprising, that in relation to the large funding by public money, there has been no attempt to systematically analyze incubators in the Czech Republic.