Resource emergence and transfer in virtual business incubators

This dissertation examines how critical resources emerge and are transferred within virtual business incubators, thereby addressing one of the central questions for the success of virtual entrepreneurial support: how can digitally mediated incubation generate the social, relational, and cognitive conditions that entrepreneurs need to develop their ventures? While existing research has largely emphasized the structural advantages of virtual incubation, such as scalability, flexibility, and extended access to expertise, it has provided only limited insight into the internal mechanisms through which these formats actually become effective.

The dissertation’s main contribution lies in uncovering how the key resources of community, trust, and knowledge are formed, sustained, and transferred through virtual interaction. Rather than treating these resources as given elements of an incubator’s service portfolio, the study shows that they emerge through specific, deliberately facilitated processes. To provide a thorough understanding of these mechanisms, the dissertation develops a process-oriented understanding of virtual business incubators as socio-digital support systems. It shows that the resources most decisive for incubation success do not arise automatically from digital access or formal program design. Instead, they depend on the quality of interaction architectures through which participants are socially embedded, relationally assured, and enabled to turn knowledge into entrepreneurial capacity. The dissertation further demonstrates that these resources are deeply interdependent. In doing so, the dissertation advances virtual business incubation theory from a primarily structural understanding toward a dynamic explanation of resource emergence and transfer. It offers both theoretical insight and practical guidance for designing, managing, and evaluating virtual incubators as relationally grounded environments in which entrepreneurial development can unfold despite, and partly because of, virtuality.