Fatores críticos de sucesso para incubadoras: uma análise de incubadoras instaladas no Rio Grande do Sul

Abstract

The international competitive environment in which productive activities are embedded is based on technological empowerment, innovation, flexibility and constant and accelerated change. Such scenario requires changes in the strategies of the economic agents and an increase in the participation of the State in the support to the regional productive systems aiming its innovation and its sustainable development. Therefore, many governments invest in the creation and maintenance of business incubators, seeking to foster entrepreneurship, support entrepreneurs in the early years of the business and encourage the technological development of regions around the world. However, the success of business incubators and incubated companies is interrelated and influenced by a number of factors, with internal and external dimensions, static and dynamic, tactical and strategic, organizational and technical, that directly influence management and ensure sustainability of organizations. This exploratory-descriptive study aimed to investigate the influence of Critical Success Factors (CSFs) on the performance of business incubators in the State of Rio Grande do Sul. After reviewing the literature, 33 CSFs were identified for the business incubators. These CSFs were transcribed as questions in the data collection instrument for the interview with the 19 incubator managers that are operating in the State. In the interview, in addition to identifying the managers' perception regarding the level of practice of each of the CSF, the values of 5 performance indicators of the incubators for the years 2012 to 2016 were also questioned. Aiming at reaching the specific objective of analyzing the influence of the most practiced CSFs on the performance of business incubators in Rio Grande do Sul, the Pearson’s correlation coefficient calculation for each CSF was applied as a technique in comparison with the 5 performance indicators. After the forty analyzes, no correlation with significant value was found, which indicates that it is not possible to affirm that the eight categories of Critical Success Factors influence the five performance indicators of the incubators studied. This fact can be explained by the short time of existence of the business incubators, since 37% of them had four years or less of activities at the time of this research, ie, these incubators had little time to put into practice many of the CSFs questioned here, according to Dornelas (2002) the average time of the cycle of a company within an incubator is 2 to 4 years. On the other hand, it can be said that, in general, the development of the CSFs of the incubators in the State of Rio Grande do Sul is still an initial one, as few have been evaluated as having well-implemented and mature processes among those that were evaluated. Even so, the research question was answered and the results show that three categories of CSFs presented the highest levels of practice in the five incubators with the highest averages in the performance indicators, being: Location, Pre-Incubation and Graduation.