Development of Business Incubators: Case Study of Latvia

Business incubation is increasingly playing an important role for new start-ups around the globe. In a growing number of countries, incubators that support the development of young, innovative firms are introduced as a way to strengthen the entrepreneurial activity (number of start-ups) and the ability for new companies to survive. This paper focuses on exploring the current situation in business incubation in Latvia. The research was based on the study of the regulatory enactments of the Republic of Latvia, scientific publications, and special literature related to the research topic. Adequate research methods - analysis and synthesis, logical and abstract constructive, data interpolation and expert - were used to carry out this study. The results of study showed that the development of business incubators in Latvia dated back to 1993 when the first establishment of this kind - the Latvian Technological Centre - was founded. Since that time, the number of business incubators in Latvia has grown to 17 (with 18 developed subsidiaries). It was also concluded that business incubators were distributed geographically throughout Latvia, thus providing balanced regional development. Finally, networking, which is in line with the latest development trends of business incubators all around the world, can be mentioned as a positive development tendency of Latvian business incubators.