Who Is Really Residing in the Czech Business Incubators?

There is no official statistics on types of companies that reside in business incubators and accelerators. Purpose of this study is to shed some light on who is using services of the business incubators in the Czech Republic. Design/methodology/approach: Since November 2016, we have contacted via phone and email representatives of the Czech entrepreneurial infrastructure. We have managed to get self-reported list of supported enterprises from 32 (51%) out of 63 Czech business incubators and accelerators. In total, we have received 894 names of companies, and out of them we were able to identify 794 (89%) companies. The identification and verification was conducted with a help of business register and database Albertina. We used Albertina database further to obtain firm´s characteristics.Findings: Supported companies are most densely located in Prague, Moravia-Silesia and South Moravia regions. Most of the enterprises are companies with limited liabilities. We report slightly higher failure rate among the incubated companies when compared to the ratio of companies which annually withdraw from business and the total amount of economically active enterprises. Financial data show that more than half of the companies reported annual turnover lower than 2 mil. CZK. Based on Chi-square test, we confirmed association between the year of official registration and revenues’ size of the supported companies. Research/practical implications: Our study offered initial insight into the performance of the companies supported by entrepreneurial infrastructure in the Czech Republic. Building upon presented findings, a more sophisticated analysis of the financial performance, based on historical data and variety of indicators, is needed in order to obtain more robust results. Originality/value: Presented study exploits a unique glimpse of the ecosystem reality on the level of tenant firms, revealing which companies are really using the incubators and what is their performance.