The role of business incubation in promoting entrepreneurship and SMEs development

The role of business incubation in fostering entrepreneurship and SMEs development has generated a strong interest among policymakers in recent years. Even among scholars, there is a general consensus that entrepreneurship is pivotal to economic growth in both developing and developed countries. This study investigated the role of business incubators on entrepreneurship and SMEs development in Nigeria. The population of this study comprised of 60 incubatees in Oyo and Lagos State National Board of Technological Beneficiaries (NBTI). Yamane formula was employed to determine the sample size. The sample size for this research study was 60 respondents (30 incubatees in Oyo State and 30 incubatees in Lagos State). The sampling validity was used to access the validity of the data. The study made use of statistical tools which include: analysis of variance (ANOVA) and correlation efficient in testing hypotheses where applicable. The responds gotten from the questionnaire was sorted, coded and the Statistical Packages for Social Sciences (SPSS) was used for the analysis. This study found that business incubation coaching has a positive significant on human capital management towards entrepreneurship performance and also revealed that incubation business knowledge has a positive significant on the sales turnover level of entrepreneurship performance. This research has shown that 70% of the all startup ventures that survive the first three years of operations passed through the incubation programs. The study recommended that the incubation centers should emphasize more on their coaching and technical knowledge, as the result of findings shows that coaching and technical knowledge acquisition contributes 61.3% and 73.6% respectively towards entrepreneurship performance in terms of human capital management and their productivity performance level.