Knowledge Sharing in a Business Incubator

Abstract: Purpose: The purpose of the research is to investigate how entrepreneurs experience knowledge sharing in a business incubator. Furthermore, the study explores which fac- tors enable or inhibit knowledge sharing. Design/methodology/approach: The research is based on an inductive approach with twelve semi-structured interviews serving as the main empirical data, with additional unstructured observations supporting the data. Since the focus is on entrepreneurs lived experiences, a phenomenological approach is used. Findings: The thesis argues that entrepreneurs experience four aspects; 1) open office space, 2) management support, as well as 3) activities and the 4) community – as sup- portive for sharing knowledge in a business incubator. Both, the notions of collaborative communities (CC) and communities of practise (COP), respectively, show crucial as- pects that are of particular importance in enabling knowledge sharing. Hence, our find- ings show that both notions viewed from a convergent perspective could result in a mu- tually beneficial new framework, which can be named collaborative communities of practice (CCOP). The constructed framework constitutes a suitable illustration of how missing values in the concept of COP can be extended in order to promote knowledge sharing. Originality/value: By outlining experienced enabling aspects to share knowledge and by introducing a merged framework regarding knowledge sharing, the authors offer a new foundation for theory building for researchers in this field, as well as interesting re- sults for practitioners.