New publication: chapter in a handbook on business & technology incubation/acceleration

I am pleased to announce that I have a chapter appearing in a newly published Handbook of Research on Business and Technology Incubation and Acceleration co-edited by my friend Prof. Sarfraz Mian, an international expert on the topic who is based at the State University of New York at Oswego.

Over the years I’ve written tens of thousands of words on topics related to business incubation and acceleration, but mostly as consulting work products or legislative testimony intended to influence public policy. This is the first time my thoughts – admittedly those of a practitioner, not a scholar – have been published in an academic book.

This chapter grew out of a talk Prof. Mian invited me to give several years ago at symposium he had organized at his campus. The challenge he issued me was to reflect on recent developments and likely future trends in the practice of business incubation, as viewed through the lens of my experience cofounding and operating (2006-2016) the Business Incubator Association of New York State, Inc.

I write not from the perspective of a startup investor – although I’ve been both an angel investee and an angel investor at various times in my career – but instead from that of an economic-development practitioner. As a result, I spend some time in my chapter distinguishing the goals of investors from those of economic developers. One of my arguments is that while venture capital is good at many things, developing regional economies outside the coastal metros is not necessarily one of them, and there may be better incubation strategies available than chasing the high-valuation “unicorns” that are of maximum interest to venture capitalists. This is likely a controversial opinion.

My chapter appears in the context of more theoretical treatments by scholars from around the world, and also a couple of perspectives from two other NYS practitioners I came to meet during my time running the association (Nasir Ali and Marnie LaVigne). I look forward to reading them all and hope you will join me. Perhaps your institutional library has bought a copy or offers you access to the e-book version. If not, the main link includes free access to the book’s front matter, including the editors’ introduction and an overview chapter by Prof. Mian.

UPDATE (10/21). As of six months after publication, I am able under my agreement with Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd. to upload an unedited preprint of my chapter in an Elgar title published in April 2021. A pdf is embedded at the previous link.