Sustainability profiled incubators-process for recruiting and supporting tenants

Since the recruitment and support process of sustainability profiled incubators have received little research attention, the goal of this paper is to fill this knowledge gap by an empirically investigation of three sustainability oriented incubators in Sweden, Finland and Germany. The data used in the study comes from interviews with managers, stakeholders, tenants in selected incubators, in Green Tech Park (Sweden), LADEC (Finland) and Green Garage (Germany). Our major implications are that, the studied incubators on average have an ambition to recruit and develop sustainability oriented start-ups, but a critical mass of such tenants is vital if any such ambitions are to become a reality. This critical mass of start-ups is influenced by the local context, which generates both potential tenants and resources to support such firms. For incubator management, this suggests an active search for tenants interested in sustainable entrepreneurship and providing support focused on such activities.