Report on healthcare incubators and accelerators in UK & Germany

There are a lot of research and studies being carried out globally about the role and impact of business incubators and accelerators in the launch of start-ups and also about their support during the entrepreneurial journey. The main objective of this thesis research is to apply the research methodology developed by Social Innovation Monitor (SIM) in order to analyze the business incubators and accelerators operating in healthcare sector in UK & Germany. In order to achieve this goal, the study was conducted in order to make a list of business incubators and accelerators in each of the country, to find out the various sectors in which they prefer to work and thereby figuring out the organizations working in healthcare sector, to apply the few selection criterions to filter out a sample and to finally make a very thorough and detailed analysis to reach an honest conclusion. The study began with a literature analysis in order to understand the topic in a more detailed way using past research papers and publications. This helped in knowing more about what incubators and accelerators are with definitions, their origin and evolution, the various incubator types and also about other related topics. A summary of past research on healthcare innovation was also added along with few points regarding COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on healthcare sector to have more idea specifically about this topic. The thesis activity started by making a database of total incubator population in both countries and thus a list of 259 and 269 business incubators/accelerators was made for Germany & UK respectively. Also, a separate list was made to include organizations that did not meet the eligibility criteria. Using this total population, further research was done to form a list of organizations supporting healthcare sector. This healthcare incubator population came up to 125 in the case of Germany and 140 in the case of United Kingdom. This included organizations supporting healthcare companies and also the non-specific ones that do not focus on particular sectors. Further study and data collection was conducted to do a detailed analysis of healthcare incubators in both countries. The analysis started by comparing the healthcare incubator population of each country to the total population to know the focus given to innovation in this sector in both countries. This was followed by geographical distribution analysis of healthcare incubators in both countries and concentration of incubators related to area and population. The research also presents a basic understanding of the key information and financial data of healthcare incubators in both the countries. This includes analysis of number of employees, number of organizations supported, revenue, net income and EBITDA. A comparison on the number of incubators that declared to work in healthcare and those that support healthcare alone have also been included. Also, there is a section that looks into the sectors other than healthcare supported by the considered incubators. Each of the topics discussed have separate sections for both Germany and United Kingdom in order to understand the situation in each country and also a comparison part is included just to brief on the high-level similarities and differences between them. Finally, the conclusion section has a detailed summary of final conclusions and comparisons with respect to each of the above analysis and also the limitations of this research along with future research ideas.