Introduction
Incubator is a place where newly-created businesses are concentrated at a limited space. Through its services it supports selected entrepreneurs within a particular region and provides them with suitable starting conditions during the first years of their existance. Helping starting and growing entrepreneurs to overcome obstacles, the incubator gives them a chance to start up as successfuly as possible. Thus it increases the chance for a survival of newly-established small enterprises and lessens market impacts upon a start-up company when being the most vulnerable.
More than 4.000 incubators exist all over the world, out of which approximately 1.200 operate in Europe creating 30.000 new jobs per year. In the USA, 1.000 incubators help more than 35.000 start-ups, which give jobs to almost 82.000 workers, and generate an annual income of more than USD 7 bil. Asia counts more than 1.150 incubators with nearly 6.200 businesses. (Source: Business incubators in the local development and transfer of technologies. INTEG Project. Inital presentation. 2005).
In Slovakia, in the period 2002 - 2006, the network of 16 incubators was established from the pre-accession Phare fund, state budget, structural funds and means of recipients of contributions, which help starting entrepreneurs in different regions of Slovakia and provide them with advantages before and at the beginning of their entrepreneurial activities.
