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Kudzai Mubaiwa Business Hub
There are various models of incubators and innovation spaces. What is critical is to determine the optimal model to achieve the economic development agenda in a specific geographical location.

A common mistake is the copy and paste approach, where promoters replicate models that have worked in Europe, America or even other African countries; and wonder why they are not achieving the same effects or outcomes. There is certainly room for learning from others, but the important thing would be to utilise only the aspects that work well in your environment. I have had opportunity to get insight into a couple of models over the past years through participation in incubation conferences and start-up event tours with associations such Ampion Venture Bus, National Business Incubator Association and more recently the Global Innovation Gathering. Below is a simplified guide to some four popular inferences.

Technology hubs

Technology hubs tend to support the growth and development of ideas in the technology space. Many of them will look into assisting innovators developing applications and websites that offer solutions in various sectors: retail, health, education, agriculture, finance, corruption even. Hackathons are a common gathering feature of these spaces, which can be an all-night or all day competition where different teams get themes and try to build online solutions to problems in the theme. They will typically end with pitching the ideas and their functionality to a panel of experts and/or funders; usually with some cash and/or gadget prizes.

(Unfortunately, many times prizes become an end in itself). Tech hubs take various forms and shapes around the world, where they include biotechnologies, with some inclining towards being testing centres for mobile solutions and others more like digital learning centres. Often they will provide space for the start-ups/students to operate from with the hope that they can benefit from collaboration and critical mass in engaging partners or other resources.

While occasionally some start-ups may generate income for the tech hub, sustainability of these spaces is usually a headache, the start-ups may not gain traction fast enough, may not find a way to generate consistent revenue, let alone scale and create some income for their base.

It is important to be aware that an app or website is not a business – hence the need to augment coding skill with sound business skills capacity building for co founders. Often these are run by a hub/community manager together with in-house technology experts, and may generate income from consulting work, research and creating apps on order, amongst other things. Some have a purely social contribution agenda; using technology for development. Popular African examples include the iHub and the Dev School (Nairobi), started by a young lady called Njeri as a teenager, they teach young people to code through boot-camps, similar to the work Muzinda Hub now does, locally. Neolab is an active and exciting tech hub that yielded Saisai the start up which won last year’s Demo Africa. There are also some mLabs in East, Southern Africa with excellent testing facilities.

Co-working spaces

Co-working spaces as the name goes are in the core business of letting out office space. They may have varying sizes of offices, and the more economic cubicle type – plus access to a boardroom, meeting room, training rooms and often shared access to services such as printing, copying, telephone and mailboxes/mail address, and of course kitchens, ablutions and the popular Wi-Fi!

Emphasis is on the facilities management, and the oversight of such a space is a tiring function all by itself with administration, collection, repairs, seeking and releasing tenants. The housed businesses may not necessarily be related, but they can find mutual benefit through interaction at meet ups, if any – and if the tenants go out of their way to find out what other neighbouring enterprises do, synergies can be identified.

They tend to be excellent locations for community type meetings and hosting of major, periodic start-up events, in which case the co-working space becomes a gathering place for local entrepreneurs and innovators looking to network and learn in an unstructured environment. Naturally, they anticipate revenue from rentals, and thus the bigger the space the better.

In May I got my mind absolutely blown away seeing The Factory in Berlin as part of the Global Innovation Gathering incubator tours, the co-working space that headquarters SoundCloud and includes Twitter in Germany.

That, after visiting a re-purposed swimming bath that hosts all sorts of economic development events in two former council swimming pools, and they are contemplating converting the individual bathrooms to cubicles! Locally, we have spaces like Hypercube and Area 46 housing some really interesting projects.

In Bulawayo, Skihub recently opened doors to innovators who are transitioning from working from home to a more formal environment.

Business incubators/accelerators

Business incubators/accelerators may very well cover everything else; these are institutions that deliberately seek to grow ideas to a point where they commercialise. Many of them will consciously or not incline towards Eric Ries’ Lean Startup methodology, ensuring that selected/invited participants to their programs can build a minimum viable product, test and validate it with potential customers, iterate or pivot entirely then bring it to scale.

It sounds rather simple and methodical but along that journey is a lot of hardwork and pain and tears. Mixed use spaces will seek out the best projects in various sectors, while some will specifically deal with specialised sectors, as do catering/kitchen incubators.

Clients admitted into the programs can get an assortment of linkages and benefits including training, funding, market linkages, co-founder capacity building for entrepreneurship and visibility, and free coffee!

They tend to seek to build an ecosystem around their charges and ensure they ‘graduate them’ after the program contract ends, with an exit event where they pitch their ideas to attract partners for scale. Typically they cannot admit more than a certain number of projects at a time.

Some variations of these include those that may focus on only one aspect such as pitching, business skills training, funding; and of course running an informative blog.

General business incubators will work with Greenfield ideas while accelerators may tend more towards those that have made some progress and are seeking rapid growth and/or expansion of a tested products/service. Impact hubs are one of the strong brands across the world, as is the iceLabs “franchise” of incubators. Locally, we have various players such as Emerging Ideas whose monthly Pitch Nights and blogs are fabulous, Stimulus Hub Networking meetings and of course our very own iZone running a platform for youth promoting financial literacy, and the use of digital tools for enterprise development.

Makerspaces/hackerspace/labs

Last but not least is this intriguing concept, where creative ones gather in a workshop environment and deal with tangible stuff, tearing apart and building functional things.

I personally find this very exciting as it speaks to hardware innovations and hacks that may, say, look at building a 3D printer from e-waste (A concept one Roy from Kenya presented at the most recent Global Innovation Gathering), or making a coffee-maker from old wire hangers and empty plastic bottles.

They build alternative energy platforms, develop wearables, and just do a lot of tinkering with all sorts of things, and it’s always so cool and innovative! We need this as a nation: that ability to take things apart, learn them and then build/create things we can improve our lives with, and sell.

Find yourself

Defining innovation spaces is like an attempt to split thin hairs, as one will find often that many innovation spaces will have several aspects taken from each of the oversimplified summaries above. It remains the prerogative of each one to appropriately classify and name/brand itself.

Locations of these can be garages, homes, local authority buildings, commercial properties, churches, universities and other learning institutions and any physical gathering places in communities (not the bars, though!) – while some will be virtual, interacting with a large entrepreneurial community online, with occasional periodic offline engagement. In summary, any community can have and be an economic development centre, an economic zone if you like, and shape it according to the core activities that drive it.

Indeed it is such “small” efforts that, if conducted at local levels, by locals; build the nation from the bottom up. Next week, we will explore how to build an ecosystem around an innovation space, ensuring sustainability from the onset.

◆ Kudzai M Mubaiwa is an economic development professional and managing consultant of Investor Saint Pvt Ltd, a financial education company. She is also a certified incubator manager and co-founder of iZone, a mixed use incubation program that provides a platform for capacity building of youth and women enterprise owners in the digital age. She has participated in and presented at economic development and innovation/tech platforms in East and Southern Africa, Asia, North America and Europe. You can reach her via email on [email protected] or twitter handle @kumub