Better Incubation Policy Recommendations are out!

The European Action Plan “Building an economy that works for people: an action plan for the social economy” (2021-2030) launched by the European Commission recognises the importance that the mainstream BSOs have in the support of social economy entities (p.14):

The Commission calls on Member States to encourage mainstream business incubators to extend their support to social economy entities, to improve business investment readiness support opportunities. The ‘Better Incubator’ pilot launched by the European Commission can serve as inspiration.

The final objective of Better Incubation is to kick-start an “eco-systemic” change by bringing incubation and business support services closer to society and contributing to societal needs through entrepreneurship and self-employment based on job creation, skills development, and provision of opportunities for unemployed and vulnerable people to fully participate in the society and economy.

To achieve this goal, BSOs are called to act in synergy with the wider entrepreneurial ecosystem, as individual business incubators are not going to be able to change the culture and institutional practices around social and inclusive entrepreneurship alone.

Besides focusing on the internal capacities of BSOs, the Better Incubation project approach is also outward-looking to the wider ecosystem, considering broader cultural and institutional change needed to meet the objectives stated above.

This report presents the key findings resulting from the work carried out by the Better Incubation Consortium over the last 2 years and involving several European stakeholders in a series of learning, experimentation, and reflection activities on the role mainstream BSOs can play in better promoting and supporting social and inclusive entrepreneurship in Europe and beyond.

Download it here: D2.3_Better Incubation_Policy Recommendations_Edit

Based on the insights from the preliminary research on existing inclusive incubation practices, the learnings from the 21 Better Incubation pilots, offering incubation services to more than 130 entrepreneurs/would-be entrepreneurs in 19 EaSI countries, and the existing recommendations in the Better Entrepreneurship Policy Tool and EU policies, CoPs elaborated policy recommendations.

Better Incubation Policy Recommendations were validated and enriched during 15 regional policy workshops that involved more than 260 stakeholders in 14 European countries. These discussions resulted in 15 regional policy manifestos highlighting regional priorities and steps needed to better promote and support social and inclusive entrepreneurship in those territories and ecosystems. These are available at the end of this document.

Following an in depth discussion with the Better Incubation Advisory Board members (ENSIE, Cooperatives Europe, Caritas Europa, EMES), a final validation was performed in Brussels on December 2^nd, 2022, during the Better Incubation EU Policy Workshop, that saw the active participation of 22 stakeholders representing European policy makers, researchers, regional and national public authorities, investors, incubators, entrepreneurs, social actors, and non-governmental organisations contributing to the European social and inclusive entrepreneurship ecosystem.

We are now glad to release the Better Incubation Policy Recommendations, a set of reflections and ideas aimed at providing some inspiration for BSOs and other stakeholders to work together towards a more inclusive and impact-driven entrepreneurship ecosystem across Europe.

We recommend reading the Better Incubation key publications to get more details about these findings and the background information informing these final recommendations:

• Better Incubation Best Practices
• Better Incubation Toolkit
• Better Incubation Insight Paper

• Better Incubation Roadmap