differently depending on whether they had been used or not and what this may imply in terms of perceived and realised affordances.
Table 10 presents a summary of data that was obtained from Strand Two, the survey. Note that this set of firms is not exactly the same set of firms that participated in Strand Three of data collection (the interviews with firms) although there is a substantial overlap. The first column shows the number (and percentage) of firms that had actually used the provisions.
The number of firms varies slightly for each provision as not all respondents answered all the questions. Missing values were excluded from the value judgement columns. The second column (mean if used) and the third column (mean if not used) show the mean value judgement rating based on a 100-point sliding scale from 0=least valuable to 100=most valuable. The fourth column (mean difference)shows the differences between the means of the two value judgements. In the fifth column a t-test is used to test whether the means of the value judgements for provisions that were used and not used were significantly different, with the significance level in the last column. A typically acceptable probability error is <0.05 (Boslaugh & Watters, 2008) and, accordingly, these associated provisions are highlighted in red in Table 10.
The category of provisions with the highest level of usage was the internal-intangible category, and the individual provisions with the highest use were market validation and development (H) at 97% of firms, and strategy methodologies (E) at 89% of firms. The most valued provision by firms that had used it was connections to potential major customers (S) at 95 points, followed by funding for firms by incubator (C) at 92 points and the firms’ head office being sited at the incubator (A) at 89 points. This suggests that the affordances from these provisions may have been important to the firms. The provisions that were valued the lowest by firms that had used them were connections to interns from tertiary institutions (V) at 53 points and professional services (P) at 54 points. The affordances from these
provisions may have been less important to the firms.
81: Findings and analysis – The affordances of incubators’ provisions
Table 10
Comparison of Availability and Value Judgements of Provisions
Provision
Firms’ head office located in
incubator (A) 12 (50%) 89.17
Internal-tangible mean 86.79 49.03 37.76
General business
administration tasks (D) 11 (32%) 63.09
(29.73) 52.26 n=25
(23.85) 10.83 1.06 .306
Strategy methodologies (E) 32 (89%) 82.50
(12.84) 83.75 n=4
Developing a team of people
(L) 15 (43%) 70.13
(23.31) 68.80 n=21
(24.44) 1.33 0.16 .872
Educational workshops (M) 25 (71%) 64.20
(29.34) 50.70 n=11
(23.00) 13.50 1.30 .203
Internal-intangible mean 72.96 62.61 10.35
Government grants (N) 21 (58%) 69.57
External-tangible mean 74.46 81.27 -6.80
Professional services (P) 21 (58%) 54.38
(21.44) 65.40 n=15
(19.79) -11.01 -1.57 .126
Subject matter experts (Q) 21 (60%) 74.14
(17.01) 64.93 n=15
(30.70) 9.21 1.02 .320
Potential board members (R) 17 (49%) 73.76
(20.12) 51.50 n=19
(25.49) 22.26 2.86 .007
Potential major customers (S) 13 (36%) 95.08
(6.10) 87.74 n=23
External-intangible mean 69.62 60.34 7.21
82: Findings and analysis – The affordances of incubators’ provisions
Note that the data in Table 10 is drawn from Strand Two (n=37) and not from the incubator interviews from Strand Three. Hence some totals for the provision usage and awareness, while similar, do not equate with the subsequent discussion.
While it is interesting to know what provisions were used, what is potentially more interesting is the value that firms placed on the provisions, and if this value differed according to whether or not the provisions had been used. Provisions that had high differences in value judgements may indicate, for example, that firms are realising affordances that they had not perceived or that the non-users did not want or need the provisions; however, this cannot be ascertained from the data. While differences can be seen in the mean difference column, few of the differences were actually statistically different.
Differences in the internal-tangible category of provisions, namely the firms’ head office being located in incubator (A) and the use of meeting rooms in incubator (B) had differences in value judgement means that were statistically greater at, respectively, 49 and 37 points by firms that had used these provisions. Similarly the value judgment mean was over 21 points greater for users than non-users of the provisions of connections to potential board
members (R) and 21 points greater for connections to business mentors outside the
incubator (U). Other provisions also had high, but not statistically significant differences in means including assistance with product validation and development (F), help with
developing a board of directors (K), educational workshops (M) and assistance with growth management (J).
These high differences indicate that firms that had used these provisions valued them more highly than firms that had not used them, therefore it could tentatively be concluded that the perceived affordances of the provisions were lower than the realised affordances. It is
important to note however, that the value perception data was gathered from two sets of firms, users and non-users and not from the same firms before and after they used the provisions. Therefore the difference could occur because the non-users did not need the provision and accordingly judged its value lower.
Note that the total number of firms that provided data for provisions A, B and C was just 26 (as opposed to 36 firms) as this data was collected subsequent to the original survey, Strand Two.
In some cases the value judgement ratings of provisions were lower by firms that had used them, but this occurred to a lesser extent and the differences are not statistically significant.
83: Findings and analysis – The affordances of incubators’ provisions
Notably, connections to professional services (P) was 11 points lower for firms that had used this provision compared to those that had not, and connections to government grants (N) was nearly eight points lower, although neither of these are statistically significant. This difference may indicate that firms that had not used these provisions believed them to be of greater value than the firms that had used these provisions, potentially indicating that the perceived affordances from these provisions were higher than the realised affordances.
However the data did not specifically generate information to address this and further research is needed before making these claims.
Overall, there appeared to be the greatest difference in the value judgements of the internal-tangible provisions between the firms that had used these provisions and those that had not, followed by the internal-intangible and the external-intangible provisions. Overall, firms that had not used these provisions valued them lower than firms that had used them.