Model of social business incubation in Italy
The social economy, and therefore the social enterprises that are an expression of it, are becoming increasingly important, due to the important role they play in addressing the major challenges our societies are facing. Just as for-profit enterprises, social enterprises also need certain policies, economic support and structures to help them develop, both in start-up and within development phases of their activities. Therefore, social business incubators play a central role and foster entrepreneurial teams to survive and grow by providing several services from space and capital, to training and support.
The study Model of social incubation in Italy defines and analyses incubators that mainly support start-ups with a significant social impact. The aim of this document is to present the criticalities of the social incubator system in Italy, the existing policies and those that could better support their development.
The social incubation patterns in Romania, Cyprus and Italy were analyzed through an extensive methodology that include various data collection methods:
- desk review, secondary data analysis, public policy analysis;
- best practice examples of social business incubators, financial instruments and hubs (16);
- entrepreneurial stories (4);
- in-depth interviews with representatives of social enterprises (5).