Good Practice

Consultants and Advisers

For a Spanish version, please see below

Incubator's usually have a fairly small number of dedicated staff, and so many make use of external experts to help provide high quality business building services for the incubated enterprises. This article describes the characteristics of different types of experts and how to match their skills with the needs of incubated enterprises.

Objectives

This Guideline sets out approaches for incubators working with consultants and advisors to benefit incubated companies.

During the business development and consolidation stages, incubated companies require a range of support measures to improve their performance. It is the incubator’s responsibility to provide the tenant companies with a board of specialists in management and other fields, who are able to guide the entrepreneurs in growing their business. The consulting services offered to incubated companies need to be done with the objective of analyzing the needs of the companies, identifying solutions and recommending measures to be taken.

However, to maintain a permanent board of specialists can be too expensive for incubators, since the knowledge fields required are numerous and diverse. A good option is to establish a network of partnerships with professionals from different work areas.

This external professionals network, if well managed, can assure the entrepreneurs of high quality guidance at low costs to the incubator, as some of these professionals are likely to be willing to work as volunteers. The network could be divided into three main categories: consultants, mentors and advisers.

Consultants are specialists in technical and managerial matters, who help the incubator’s manager in the selection as well as in the monitoring of the tenant companies. They also advise and guide the entrepreneurs in strategies and in business management, according to their expertise. The most common areas are marketing, finance, accountancy and strategic and legal planning. However, other activities such as international commerce, technological management, and intellectual property, may required by some enterprises according to their development stage.

A mentoring group in an incubator is generally formed by successful entrepreneurs with valuable experience, and even by graduated companies of the same incubator that wish to share their experience with new entrepreneurs. These mentors are volunteers who provide their services for free, so the mentors offer great additional value to incubated companies. There could be a mentor for each client company, as well as a mentor for a group of incubated companies. The number and mix of mentors will depend on the capacity of the business incubator to attract and engage a reasonable number of successful entrepreneurs as volunteers.

The advisers are also experienced business professionals willing to provide guidance and support to the entrepreneurs. Many enterprises in the beginning of their activities lack an efficient Board of Directors. Thus, the role of these advisers is to act as a temporary council for the companies until a formal Board of Directors is formed (Wolfe, 2000).

In short, there is an increasing demand for consulting services by those who are determined to improve their competitive capacity. However, just as in any other activity, incubator managers must be careful when forming a network of consultants to ensure that this effort will bring concrete and positive results for the company.

Key Issues

The important stages in the establishment of a professionals network (consultants, advisers and mentoring group) are:

Identification of the enterprises’ needs
Identification and selection of consultants
Identification of successful entrepreneurs willing to contribute to the work of the incubator (may be achieved by consulting entrepreneurs’ associations, etc.)
Establishment of contacts and making the partnerships formal
Establishing rules and criteria for the development of the services, such as deadlines, quality, values.