University needs business incubators

Entrepreneurial incubators or often called business incubators are not new in Higher education institutions (Heis). The creation of a business incubator in the educational institution environment aims to build a synergy between academics and business professionals. This article explores the need for a business incubator for an entrepreneurial university.

Incubation comes from the language of medicine which means maturation of a symptom, both the symptoms of the disease and the growth rate of the fetus (baby) in the mother's womb. So often we see in the maternity home, doctors and nurses give different treatments to babies born prematurely through the incubation process. This understanding is then adopted by the discipline of Biology which defines incubation as a process of hatching seedlings, both plant seeds, fish seeds (e.g. hatching of fish, through the warming of seeds/eggs of fish in an aquarium with a certain level of warmth and time), as well as hatching poultry eggs that also go through the process of warming as a substitution of the natural process of hardening the egg from its mother.

Systemically, business incubators are a vehicle for the transformation of human resource formation that is not or less creative and productive into human resources that have creative, innovative, productive, and cooperative entrepreneurial motivation as the first step of the creation of entrepreneurs who have a competitive and comparative advantage and have a vision and mission.

Business incubators have community coverage that integrates into operations and activities, namely: entrepreneurs, educational institutions, financing institutions, business consultants, business legal counsel, private, state-owned enterprises, government through related technical agencies, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). 

The concept of a business incubator was born between the economic times of classical and neoclassical capitalism. Classical capitalism according to Adam Smith (1776) is an economic system with characteristics of owning individual resources to create profit for itself. This theory has an individualistic tendency without regard to relationships and integration. While neoclassical views that the market consists of many buyers and sellers who integrate with each other to create a formulation of supply equal to demand or "equilibrium". This theory views individuals as part of a market economy system that always has to make development and change to meet supply or demand. 

The business incubator paradigm is part of the global new economy, which is due to rapid and significant changes in technology, telecommunications, digitalization, deregulation, and globalization. These changes force changes in every culprit ranging from the scale of countries, companies/organizations, and individuals. The new economic era is an economic era consisting of many phenomena that interact with each other and connect in realizing goals.

One form of Business Incubator is SOHO (small office home office) which is a contemporary business concept that was born due to developments in the field of technology, telecommunications, and digitalization, which can provide convenience for decision-makers from anywhere. In addition, the presence of business incubators in the new economy can help create a persuasive and conducive market mechanism, because doing business through the incubation process, in turn, makes competition an absolute. 

The pattern of creating new entrepreneurs and coaching small and medium enterprises through business incubators is done by coaching under one roof (in-wall) and in out-wall construction. Furthermore, both patterns are referred to as business incubator creation and coaching models. The first model is classic, namely training activities, apprenticeships, up to the pioneering of productive efforts carried out in one building unit. Each participant/member (tenant) performs their activities in their respective rooms that have been provided by the business incubator. Meanwhile, in the second incubator model, productive economic business activities are not carried out under one roof but scattered outside the business incubator management center. This is possible because in this second model the form and business activities are already running, the business incubator serves as a consultant, companion, and builder of business activities. So, in the second model is more likely to resemble a working network (business networking). Business incubator institutions under the management of the company have strategic value in applying the concept of link and match. 

A company that has a business incubator institution in its environment psychologically will have an impact on improving the learning system, perception, organizational effectiveness, and synergy creation. Business incubators have a strong relationship with the university’s role, such as education/ teaching, community services, and research. Business incubators can serve as a means of the practice of academic business concepts. In addition, business incubators have a sociological meaning that is a medium of interaction between the community and other institutions under the management of universities. 

Business incubator institutions under the management of universities can answer four work needs in today's globalization era, namely:

1.  The need for work that is challenging and has significance for the organization. Challenging work is work that is not easy to complete but is possible to complete (difficult but not impossible), while work that has significance for the organization is work that makes a valuable contribution to the success of the organization in achieving goals.

2.  The need for a conducive work environment. That is a work environment that supports smoothness and completion of work. The supportive environment includes the human resources environment and the non-human resource environment (facilities and infrastructure).

3.  The need for high employability. That is, the ability to complete the work charged.

4.  The need for intrapreneur soul empowerment among organizational actors is human resources. Intrapreneurs are characterized as follows: oriented to the achievement of organizational goals, open access to all institutions and human resources, have high work motivation, innovative, creative, have a vision, have high confidence, dare to take risks, have high business intuition, sensitive to conditions and situations inside and outside the organization, and think systematically, structured, and planned.

Business incubator activities and activities at the micro-level are a combination of economic competition at the market level or "free war" capitalism (dog eats dog) with organizations/companies based on entrepreneurship or cooperative and integrated corporate. In a competition that binds each individual will compete freely, for organizations/companies based on entrepreneurship, competition is responded dynamically without pressure to achieve goals. 

The new economy has inspired the birth of business incubator institutions. Business incubator institutions are a compromise between business interaction models, namely traditional interaction models that are face to face with modern business interaction models based on electronics {e-commerce: business to business (B2B), business to customer (B2C), customer to customer (C2C). The presence of business incubator institutions in the business environment is a synergy between business practitioners and academics towards the development of a strategic environment, especially changes in demands and behavior. These changes are grouped into: first, emerging markets. The second is the second curve of the life cycle. Third, environmentally sound business practices. Fourth, is the quest for competitiveness. Fifth, quality trends. Sixth, economic crisis turbulence. Seventh, electronic and virtual competition. Organization as a life-force system (cybernetics) is constantly undergoing change and growth. 

After in the 1970s organizations tended to implement industrial management systems and models, entering the 1990s, organizations entered a new chapter of life in the information and technology era. This development can change the institution of life between nations, between regions, and between people. Organizations made up of entrepreneurs can change threats and weaknesses as opportunities and opportunities. Excellence in transforming phenomena through intuition and business prediction and daring to take risks is the dominant feature of an entrepreneur in analyzing his environment. 

Business incubator institutions as recommendations for environmental improvement processes to (1) create organizational resilience, (2) adjust environmental changes (conducive environment) with the implementation of adaptive operating models, (3) balanced performance with superior human resource support and effective process strategies, and (4) create open systems (open systems) of organizations related to the environment (multiple proprietaries). environment). Business incubator institutions accommodate and facilitate small, medium, and large businesses in an integrated and one-many principle.