Makerspaces, Hackathons, and Pitching Competitions – New Perspectives on the Heterogeneity of Start-up Incubation: Working paper

Start-up incubation has grown rapidly over the past decades, not only in numbers but also in diversity. The heterogeneity of incubation designs increases complexity for entrepreneurs, incubation shareholders, investors, and policymakers alike. This paper thus dismantles complexity in conducting a keyword analysis using Google Trends and Factiva data of the last 10 years to understand this diversity and the status of new incubation models. It further approaches the models of makerspaces, hackathons and pitching competitions in conceptualising them under the term of start-up incubation. To understand the characteristics of those current and future models, the paper develops a typology of relevant design elements of incubation. It addresses the rather fragmented literature on incubation designs. In building on theoretical foundations of organisational sponsorship (Amezcua et al., 2013), the study provides evidence for an ongoing functional shift in start-up incubation that has so far only been mentioned anecdotally: The role of bridging mechanisms has become dominant over buffering ones. Makerspaces, hackathons and pitching competitions largely focus on relational connections with the start-ups’ environment and related intangible resources. The findings provide conceptual grounds for the further analysis of new incubation models and hence call for future empirical studies.