The Role of Pre-Incubation in the Development of Entrepreneurial Ideas of Higher Education Students

Universities play a crucial role as sources and repositories of dissemination of scientific and technical knowledge, and generating new entrepreneurs. Business and technology incubators are appropriate mechanisms to adopt the initiatives and innovated entrepreneurial ideas within university students. In this paper, a definition of pre-incubation, science and technology parks, and similar institutions was introduced in addition to their impact on the conversion of the students' entrepreneurial ideas and the results of applied research to universities and other research centers to economical products, and in the transition to a knowledge economy. Preliminary data were collected on the role of technology incubators in the field of higher education through the design of a questionnaire, which was sent to the representatives of such facilities in selected locations in the world. An innovative pre-incubation model was designed for implementation. Optional tracks were introduced, which could accommodate the student innovations until graduation, and will contribute to the development of higher education through universities. The idea of this research was engendered from studying the summer training program, which fulfills a graduation requirement in some Arab universities. Students spend a period of training in one of the government agencies or national companies for several weeks, in order to strengthen the capacity of the students participating in the program and improve their personal and practical skills. At the time, this program trained students as future employees, there is another segment of students have the willingness to engage in the world of entrepreneurship and employ themselves by starting their own small businesses. This originated the idea of the "pre-incubation," which is a different path can route some college students to invest these weeks in shaping ideas of their businesses by the assistance of selected professors, so each student can prepare business plan or prototype, which enable him to join later one business or technology incubator or to benefit from one of the funding institutions and get a loan to start his business immediately after graduation. The research was designed as a proposal to be implemented as a pilot project at one of the Egyptian universities for testing and evaluation for dissemination in various Arab universities.