Communities all over America are trying to understand and replicate the
development that has occurred along Route 128 and in Silicon Valley. What
"magic" causes clusters of companies to spring up, as if overnight, grow fast
and create thousands of jobs? What support systems, what entrepreneur-
ial infrastructures should communities develop to help companies grow?

The economic landscape is populated with all sorts of business incuba-
tion programs: business incubators, small business development centers,
technology transfer programs, training programs for women and minority
enterprises, small business investment companies, angel networks--to
name a few. It is important to understand that many of the principles and
practices discussed in this book can be applied to all these business incu-
bation programs. However, this book specifically focuses on business incu-
bators because they are at the forefront of this emerging trend of "support
systems" for entrepreneurs and new venture creation. The number of incu-
bators has been expanding at a phenomenal rate--from 10 in 1980 to
approximately 500 in 1994--and a new incubator is opening every week.

From the data available, the National Business Incubation Association
(NBIA) extrapolates that incubators have helped create at least 82,000 jobs.
This figure assumes an average of 140 jobs created per incubator, a figure
derived from responses to a 1991 NBIA survey. The NBIA believes the actu-
al number of jobs created by companies receiving assistance from incuba-
tors is closer to 100,000,1 but the association has not had the capacity to
fully document the incubator industry's growth. In the NBIA's 1995 direc-
tory, existing incubators reported about 8,000 current client companies
and 4,500 companies that had graduated.

But what has been a promising experiment in economic development is

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