How Science and Technology Parks support incubators in emerging economies

This paper highlights the important role that incubators play in emerging economies and how science and technology parks can support business incubation. We will look at two programmes that have been developed by The Innovation Hub (TIH), a South African science park in Pretoria. These programs were created to address the joint objectives of both wealth creation and poverty alleviation via upliftment of the people of South Africa. By way of comparison, we will also look at two different enterprise development activities in an extremely impoverished area of Scotland where programs for creating wealth and alleviating poverty have typically been separate. By comparing these Scottish and South African experiences, we hope to suggest implications for understanding the challenges inherent to developing and developed nations and to suggest possible ways for governments to consider policy in terms of the need to develop wealth as well as alleviate poverty simultaneously perhaps in ways where these two worlds of individuals have a greater chance of working side-by-side.