Business Incubators And Accelerators: The National Picture

This report describes the landscape of business incubators and accelerators in the UK, exploring the scale and distribution, both geographically and sectorally.

Both accelerators and incubators aim to support young firms through the early and fragile stages of growth – in theory, helping them avoid the mistakes of others, saving time and money and increasing survival rates. Because of this shared goal, these two types of organisation are sometimes conflated. However, startup accelerators are a more recent phenomenon than business incubators and do have some significant differences around their business model, source of funding, and services delivered.