What is it about?
This is the empirical study behind the uSTART Model. It followed 106 entrepreneurs through the uSTART incubator at the University of Trinidad and Tobago across three annual measurement waves, with focus groups involving 51 participants, testing which incubation dimensions predicted entrepreneurial outcomes. The pattern held across every model and every wave: mentorship was the strongest and most consistent predictor of entrepreneurial outcomes, while access to finance predicted output, jobs and revenue, but not capability. The paper reports the full longitudinal models and what they imply for how incubators should allocate their resources.
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Why is it important?
Incubators in small developing economies are usually judged on occupancy and disbursement rather than on whether they change what entrepreneurs can do. Longitudinal evidence from inside a small island incubator is rare; most published incubation research is cross-sectional and drawn from large economies. For anyone allocating an incubation budget the finding is usable at once: money buys output, mentorship builds capability, and the two are not interchangeable.
Perspectives
This paper carries the core empirical work of my doctorate. Three years of panel data is slow research, and the panel design is the point: a single snapshot could not have shown which effects held across every model and every year. Mentorship did. The design framework that followed, the uSTART Model, was built on what these models showed.
Inshan Meahjohn
University of Trinidad and Tobago
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: How Business Incubation Dimensions Drive Entrepreneurial Outcomes: Longitudinal Evidence from a Small Island Developing State, Journal of Economics and Business, March 2026, Asian Institute of Research,
DOI: 10.31014/aior.1992.09.01.710.
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