Impediments to Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Developing Countries: Implications for Science Parks and Business Incubators in the knowledge economy

With globalization and the knowledge economy the world has changed, but have science parks and business incubators kept up with the times? The paper analyses some of the impediments to innovation and entrepreneurship in developing countries, to draw out lessons for Science Parks and Business Incubators and to pose questions. 1. Is the combination of innovation and entrepreneurship a useful way in which to consider business incubation and technology parks? 2. How relevant is innovation for entrepreneurship? 3. How important is venture capital when most successful companies have bootstrapped themselves? 4. Should ICT enabling of enterprises, in numerous sectors, be a focus? The paper raises the topic of convergence and hybridization of Science Parks, Industry Clusters and Business Incubation to create innovative new models. The differences between each are only slight and convergence is happening by default, implying there are underlying principles common to each which may be useful for development of innovative new models.