ABSTRACT
The use of incubators has become a global phenomenon in terms of the organization of support structures for the creation and development of companies. There are currently some five thousand incubators throughout the world (Knopp 2007). In both Brazil and Mexico, incubators were created along the lines of other countries’ organizational models, but their implementation has taken place according to the constraints imposed by local realities. According to Etzkowitz, Mello and Almeida (2005), incubators originally sprang up in the United States as a support structure geared towards aiding individual or groups of entrepreneurs in the commercialization of research via the creation of new companies. In Brazil and Mexico, incubation has been used to address other needs, such as transferring knowledge produced by universities to the private sector, increasing the technology level of already existing companies and creating new businesses or developing business clusters (Etzkowitz 2008; Lalkaka and Bishop 1996, Smillor, Gibson and Dietrich 1990). In both countries, incubators have also been used as an instrument of policy to diminish poverty through professional training and the creation of income-generating opportunities for socially and economically marginalized groups (Pereira 1998; Singer 2002).
