Configuration Options for Corporate Incubators: Development of a Description Model Using the Morphological Analysis Method

Innovation is a catalyst for growth and competitiveness. Relying on conventional R&D activities to manage innovation, companies often fail at providing the necessary rates of innovation and developing truly radical innovations. To circumvent these problems, corporate incubators are designed to provide a separate development environment to accelerate innovation by integrating startups or providing internal project teams with resources, autonomy and work space. There are many options for designing a corporate incubator and align it to the company's strategic goals. However, no comprehensive models for the description of configuration options have been developed to date, resulting in a lack of knowledge in research and high failure rates in practice. The paper's objective is to close the knowledge gap by providing a validated, qualitative description model. For this purpose, morphological analysis is used to develop the model while the design parameters are derived drawing on an extensive analysis of literature and current business practice.