The Role of University Business Incubators in Facilitating Graduates Entrepreneurial Skills Acquisition

Abstract

This study aims to analyse the role of University Business Incubators in facilitating graduates’ entrepreneurial skills acquisition. This helps creates an environment in which everyone can help the other to put their new ideas, special skills and abilities into new businesses. In other words, the traditional universities’ role has embedded with entrepreneurial responsibility to redirect new knowledge for economic development through BIs. The study adopted an analytical descriptive methodology approach that described the basic features of the data by using the descriptive research design. A qualitative (descriptive) approach used by the research enabled him to obtained the study’s data which further assisted him to describe the respondents’ perspective and behaviour, giving a more accurate picture of what happened. The possibility of receiving a lot of data from a sizable sample of 20 respondents is one benefit of this strategy. The research reveals that managers of business incubators who have registered with Traction's database have the necessary skills to fully support the expansion of SMEs. These business incubators therefore demonstrated promise for accelerating the development of SMEs and entrepreneurial competencies among incubated business owners, including managerial and entrepreneurial competencies, as the study's findings suggested that business management and entrepreneurial competencies are crucial for business managers in running a business incubator. The study also recommended that incubators managers who lack the necessary entrepreneurship skills should enrol in business courses at neighbouring institutions or universities. Finally, it was advised that government entities open up facilities based on cutting-edge technology to support graduates’ entrepreneurial skills acquisition.