Private (and Public) Investigations: How do Public and Private Incubators change different Types of Institutions?

Abstract

Entrepreneurs cannot innovate in isolation; they are dependent on their institutional context. This context consists of normative, regulative and cultural-cognitive institutions. Institutional entrepreneurs are actors that change or create these institutions by mobilizing visions, allies and resources. This study makes two contributions to the institutional entrepreneurship (IE) literature, using incubators as an exemplary case. First, current IE literature makes little distinction between different institutional pillars. Our findings show that the strategies required to create institutional change vary per institutional pillar. We observe that institutional entrepreneurs often use a larger number of change strategies to address cultural-cognitive institutions compared to normative and regulative institutions. Second, our work is the first systematic comparison between public and private institutional entrepreneurs in the IE literature. We show that public actors are more prolific institutional entrepreneurs than their private counterparts, particularly in transparent ecosystems. This is most clearly noticeable for cultural-cognitive and regulative institutions and is caused by their effectiveness in mobilizing allies. Public incubators are therefore an influential actor in the creation of supportive institutions for entrepreneurship, and should be enabled by universities and governments.