The new role of Incubators in Innovation Ecosystem

The main aim of this paper is to investigate the new role of business incubators in innovation ecosystem and their new business model. The research is founded on a case study related to an Italian incubator that belong to a wider research focused on innovation and spatial relationships. The research results are mainly ascribable to the ability of Incubators to facilitate networking between tenants and also between tenants and external actors that belong to an Epistemic Network. As described in the case study, the incubators become knowledge intermediaries that allow firms to identify innovation parties and transform them into innovation partners and thus outlining the shift from outsourced innovation to co-managed innovation. The paper shows how knowledge intermediaries facilitate the intermediation between heterogeneous organizations that are characterized by relational proximity that is the base for reaching effective innovation.