Agnese Grineviča’s scientific contributions

Within last two decades business incubators (BI) have become an important policy measure in Central and Eastern Europe and Latvia in particular. Usually business incubation is a process of nurturing and developing a new business idea and helping businesses to grow and survive. The incubator itself is an environment, either virtual or real, within which incubation takes place. Government has supported BI in Latvia in several following rounds and new upcoming state aid program outlines importance of this tool for regional development. Incubation culture in Latvia is often misperceived to serve only a social function. As a result for publicly funded incubators process orientation dominate over expected results. Another weakness is lack of political attitude towards pre-incubation as the crucial aspect of incubation cycle. Pre-incubator can be defined as a risk-reduced environment where entrepreneurial ideas are pre-filtered for market viability thus helping to avoid greater costs and failures of setting up new company in the further phases of business development. Besides equity gap lack of pre-seed finance is critical to promote business ideas into new innovative firms. In addition to inspiration and awareness authors of new business ideas need professional couching to turn in new firm and follow-up services (consultations, mentoring, infrastructure) until it is ready to pass the entrance criteria of BI. Without support authors often fail before or after setting firm. Aim of this report is to introduce the concept of pre-incubation and explore the existing routes to support new innovative business ideas within developing incubation concepts. The paper approaches incubation policy, analyses available in market incubation models and services according growth cycle, examines efficiency of incubation system and identifies critical factors for efficient incubation system in Latvia. Special attitude is paid to best practices of pre-incubation concepts and their adaptation and importance of university research centre and incubator linkages.