Exploring Business Incubation and Drivers of Software Start-Up Success in Turkey

This study is the foundation of a longitudinal analysis of business incubators in Turkey, and their effectiveness in enhancing the success and sustainability of new software ventures. A thorough review of entrepreneurship and business incubation literature was put to use in identifying software start-up success indicators and devising a field study involving 15 start-up companies as well as 5 different business incubators located in Istanbul. The results were combined with literature review findings to derive propositions relating emergent constructs and software start-up success in Turkey. These will be used in formulating our longitudinal study encompassing nearly 20 business incubators, their tenants, and their graduates. Aside from being the first of its kind in Turkey, this study is a significant contribution to literature due to its explicit focus on the tenants rather than the incubators, its large scale encompassing multiple incubators, and its concern with the incubation outcomes having been achieved