Internationalization as a strategic orientation for university incubators in Morocco

Abstract

The contribution of the university in the creation of innovative small and medium sized business is characterized by the generation and transfer of knowledge to society through advanced scientific research, develoentreprisent, and innovation as well as by the dissemination and publication of research results to realize them. Universities offer services to encourage young researchers with innovative projects to set up their business through support structures such as incubators. An incubator open to the international market is an incubator that allows the company it hosts to design their project and start-up internationally.  It can meet the needs of innovative Start-up in terms of internationalization strategies through several initiatives.

The purpose of this article is to analyze the contribution of university incubators in the creation of innovative international business. In this context, we propose to study internationalization as a strategic orientation of university incubators in Morocco, while developing the following research question : How do university incubators contribute to the creation of innovative international companies? The present work provides an integrated view of the role played by university incubators in the creation of innovative international companies. The present analysis has shown that university incubators in Morocco are increasingly involved in the internationalization of incubated projects. However, there are still areas to be developed in these incubators in order to meet the needs of innovative project holders and satisfy their expectations.

Keywords: Creation of innovative companies ; Moroccan university ; Incubation ; Innovative internationalized companies ; internationalization strategy.

JEL Classification : M13, O31.

Paper type: Theoretical research.