Social Capital in University Business Incubators: dimensions, antecedents and outcomes

1 Social capital in University Business Incubators: dimensions, antecedents and outcomes María Redondo (corresponding author) Assistant Professor Department of Business and Marketing, University of Valladolid Faculty of Commerce Plaza del Campus Universitario, 1 47011 Valladolid, Spain e-mail: m[email protected] Telephone: +34 983 423604 Fax: +34 983 423056 Carmen Camarero Associate Professor Department of Business and Marketing, University of Valladolid Faculty of Economics and Business Avenida del Valle Esgueva, 6 47011 Valladolid, Spain e-mail: cam[email protected] Telephone: +34 983 423332 Fax: +34 983 423899 This is the accepted version of the manuscript: Redondo, M. & Camarero, C. (2019). Social capital in university business incubators: dimensions, antecedents and outcomes. International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, 15(2), 599-624. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11365-018-0494-7 Acknowledgements This work was supported by the Regional Government of Castilla y León (Spain) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) [project reference VA112P17] and by the Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness (Spain) [project reference ECO2017-86628-P]. 2 SOCIAL CAPITAL IN UNIVERSITY BUSINESS INCUBATORS: DIMENSIONS, ANTECEDENTS AND OUTCOMES Abstract While many universities around the world have devoted resources to create University Business Incubators (UBIs), the literature has neglected the study of the social capital acquired by the entrepreneurs located in university incubators. The current work analyses how incubator managers can contribute to the development of both incubator and incubatee social capital as well as the influence of social capital to the success of incubatee businesses. The empirical study is based on survey data collected from incubatees on Spanish and Dutch UBIs. The findings reveal that the entrepreneurial profile of the university and the incubator manager proactivity are critical to build a collective social capital amongst the entrepreneurs. Results indicate that the collective social capital foster the individual social capital. However, only entrepreneurs’ relationships with external agents (bridging social capital) are relevant to their businesses whereas internal relationships (bonding social capital) have not a significant effect. Keywords: Incubators; University; Social capital; Entrepreneurs 3 SOCIAL CAPITAL IN UNIVERSITY BUSINESS INCUBATORS: DIMENSIONS, ANTECEDENTS AND OUTCOMES 1. INTRODUCTION Research, teaching, and entrepreneurial activities of universities contribute to economic development. In particular, research and knowledge transfer have a major impact on this growth (Guerrero, Cunningham, and Urbano 2015). Universities have set up incubators, known as University Business Incubators (UBIs), since they encourage transfer of technology and scientific knowledge, foster entrepreneurship, and the marketing of cutting edge research (Zucker, Darby, and Armstrong 2002; Lockett and Wright 2005; Nouira, Klofsten, and Dahlstrand 2005). In this regard, the European Commission (2003, 2004) has stressed the role played by universities as agents of transfer and dissemination of knowledge to society, with a view to furthering and shaping the construction of the “Europe of Knowledge 2020”. Entrepreneurs located in academic incubators have a particular profile completely different from individuals we can find in any another type of incubator. They are usually researchers and students (Birley 2002), science oriented and novels as entrepreneurs. During the process of incubation, and in their new role as entrepreneurs, academic incubatees need to involve themselves in business networks. However, they have few or no business contacts (other entrepreneurs, managers, clients, suppliers, etc.) due to their lack of expertise in the business domain (Redondo, David, and van der Sijde 2014). In other words, academic entrepreneurs need imperatively to develop their own social capital. 4 Networking, namely the series of contacts which may emerge at both a collective (incubator) as well as an individual (incubatee) scale, is a common service in incubators. In spite of the potential benefits of UBIs to build the entrepreneurs’ social capital, several obstacles may be found. Firstly, incubatees are in the incubator for a period of time too limited to establish relationships. Additionally, they can be reluctant to establish relationships with other entrepreneurs. Therefore, they need a driver to develop social capital. Finally, it should be taken into account that the incubatees in UBIs share similar resources and capabilities (all of them have academic knowledge, but lack of business experience). Therefore, the social capital built inside the UBIs could be scarcely useful to achieve the incubatees’ business objectives. In this context, we attempt to address the following research questions: Is the social capital built into the UBIs valuable to the incubatees’ business objectives? What is the impact of the incubator manager in the promotion of relationships between incubatees and relationships with external agents? To address these questions, the current study aims to provide insights into the influence of incubators’ internal social capital in developing incubatees’ individual social capital and in the efficiency of their businesses, as well as the role of the incubator manager and the university in building incubator and incubatee social capital. Research literature has not been blind to the process of incubation nor to the key role which relationships play therein (McAdam and McAdam 2008; Hansen, Chesbrough, Nohria, and Sull 2000; Ahmad and Ingle 2011; Eriksson, Vilhunen, and Voutilainen 2014). Yet, research into the generation and the effects of social capital in incubators – and specifically in UBIs– remains scarce; hence the need to gain further insights into the relevance of internal and external social capital for incubatees in UBIs. The same is also true of incubator managers and their impact and involvement in the incubation process. 5 Studies exploring the role of the incubator manager as a driving force behind relations both inside and outside the incubator remain few and far between (Hansen et al. 2000; Rice 2002; Hannon and Chaplin 2003; Tötterman and Sten 2005; Scillitoe and Chakrabarti 2010; Cooper, Hamel, and Connaughton 2012; Vedel and Gabarret 2014). With regard to literature exploring incubators and social capital, despite studies which highlight how incubators contribute to developing social capital (Bøllingtoft and Ulhøi 2005; Tötterman and Sten 2005; Honig and Karlsson 2010), there are no studies empirically examining the cause-effect relationships between the work of the manager and the development of social capital, or the influence of collective social capital on individual social capital and the success of incubatees’ businesses. Therefore, both in the business as well as in the academic sphere, there is a need to examine the issue of the relations which emerge in incubators. The present research makes a twofold contribution. First, it finds empirical evidence of the role of the incubator manager as a driver of the formation of social capital inside the incubator. Moreover, there exists a gap or structural hole (Burt 1992) between university entrepreneurs and the business world, and the incubator manager is the bridge that links the incubatees with other external agents. The manager’s proactivity allows internal social capital to be generated and empowers incubatees to develop relationships which prove advantageous for their businesses. Second, although university incubators can be considered suitable environments for forging relationships between entrepreneurs, the benefits for the management efficiency of relationships between inexperienced incubatees with an academic and not a business background are limited. This research explains that university entrepreneurs can access business networks through the UBIs where they are located, from other incubatees, or from the incubator manager (who 6 encourage internal and external ties), but only the external relationships have a direct impact on the business project success. This paper is structured as follows. In Section 2, we provide the theoretical background and a literature review of prior research on ecosystems entrepreneurial, incubators and social capital. We put forward the hypotheses that explain the relationship between the incubator’s social capital, the incubatee’s social capital, and the management efficiency. Also, Section 2 reviews the role of the university and the incubator’s manager fostering the development of internal and external social capital. In Section 3 the method and data collection are introduced and in Section 4 we explain the results of the empirical analysis. Finally, Section 5 concludes the paper with managerial implications and suggestions for future research. 2. ENTREPRENEURIAL ECOSYSTEM, INCUBATOR AND INCUBATEE SOCIAL CAPITAL 2.1. Entrepreneurial ecosystem and incubator According to Cohen (2006, p.3) sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystems are defined as “… interconnected groups of actors in a local geographic community committed to sustainable development through the support and facilitation of new sustainable ventures”. Thus, entrepreneurial ecosystems can be considered as networks in which to identify measures to prove their sustainability (Stangler and Bell-Masterson 2015). This concept has been recently introduced to the field of entrepreneurial support, specifically in the context of academic spin-offs (Clarysse, Wright, Bruneel, and Mahajan 2014; Rice, Fetters, and Greene 2014; Hayter 2016). Literature on entrepreneurial ecosystems has focused, fundamentally, on analysing: (1) ecosystem components: informal network, formal network, university, government, 7 professional and support services, capital services and talent group (Cohen 2006); (2) ecosystem domains: politics, finance, culture, supports, human capital and markets (Isenberg 2011); (3) ecosystem measurements: density, fluidity, connectivity and diversity (Stangler and Bell-Masterson 2015); and (4) ecosystem attributes categories: cultural, social and material (Spigel 2017). However, the causes and effects of entrepreneurial ecosystems have not been analysed, nor its evolution over time (Alvedalen and Boschma 2017). Incubator is a tool for entrepreneurial support, as well as a key element of sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystems (Cohen 2006; Spigel 2017). More specifically, UBI is an essential component of university-based entrepreneurial ecosystems (Rice et al. 2014; Lasrado, Sivo, Ford, O’Neal, and Garibay 2016). In the context of entrepreneurial ecosystems, UBI has the aim of promoting the interests of academic entrepreneurs, through the elimination of barriers, both inside and outside the university (Hayter 2016). Exploring how a UBI works at a relational level, between internal agents (incubator manager and incubatees) and with external agents under the social capital approach can improve both theoretical understanding and practice of university-based entrepreneurial ecosystem. 2.2. The social capital approach Social capital involves the current and potential resources embedded in networks of relationships. It refers to the networks of relationships which allow individuals to exchange and access the different assets available in said networks (Nahapiet and Ghoshal 1998). Social capital allows access to knowledge, experience, abilities as well as other capabilities such as innovation and collaboration (Yli-Renko, Autio, and Sapienza 2001; Hatzakis, Lycett, Macredie, and Martin 2005; Liao and Welsch 2005). 8 Social capital helps to foster entrepreneurship. The establishment of social relations that contains the necessary trust and knowledge about each other facilitate communication and enhance cooperation in a context of entrepreneurship (Greve, Benassi, and Sti 2010). Certain scholars frame the contributions of entrepreneurship networks in terms of social capital. High levels of trust mediate barriers to collaboration and access to resources (Coleman 1988; Shane and Cable 2002). This usually leads to improve business performance (Aarstad, Haugland, and Greve 2010). In the field of academic entrepreneurship, the networks of spin off companies are also linked to social capital theory (Scholten 2006). Moreover, the growth of social capital within academic networks can have a positive effect on academic entrepreneurship (Petrakis 2012). As regards the levels of analysis, social capital can be individual or collective (Payne, Moore, Griffis, and Autry 2011). Individual social capital is a private resource of each individual as a consequence of the relationships they have built to their own benefit. By contrast, collective social capital refers to a public resource, based on the existence of communities or social networks from which all the members benefit. In UBIs, individuals have the opportunity to develop both their individual social capital (incubatee social capital) and to be members of a group or team (incubatees) and access collective social capital, that is, the incubator’s social capital. The incubator’s collective social capital derives from the internal network of incubatees and the incubatees’ individual social capital involves both the relationships they maintain in the incubator and their access to external networks and contacts. According to Lyons (2000), internal and external networks are necessary for entrepreneurs in the incubators since they allow them to gain access to other business networks. 9 The literature exploring social capital in the context of incubators remains scarce and varied. It has focused on how relationships in the incubator function (Lyons 2002; Hughes, Ireland, and Morgan 2007), comparing incubatees’ and non-incubatees’ social capital (Honig and Karlsson 2010), or the role of the manager as a coach (Studdard 2006; Scillitoe and Chakrabarti 2010; Ahmad 2014) as well as support in building ties between incubatees and external agents (Bøllingtoft and Ulhøi 2005; Tötterman and Sten 2005). As shown in Table 1, most works are case studies, with data from a small number of incubators (Lyons 2002; Bøllingtoft and Ulhøi 2005; Tötterman and Sten 2005; Ahmad 2014), focusing on technological businesses (Studdard 2006; Hughes Ireland, and Morgan 2007; Scillitoe and Chakrabarti 2010) located in Nordic countries and the United States (Lyons 2002; Bøllingtoft and Ulhøi 2005; Tötterman and Sten 2005; Studdard 2006; Scillitoe and Chakrabarti 2010). Only Tötterman and Sten (2005) consider different dimensions of incubator’s social capital, yet no work draws a distinction between incubatee and incubator social capital. In the following sections, we explain the interrelations between the different dimensions of incubatee and incubator social capital, and their influence on management efficiency of incubatee. We also propose that UBI’s managers can act as a structural hole or bridging tie and intermediate (brokerage) between incubatees and external agents so that the former can access to different networks and improve their social capital. Insert here Table 1 2.3. Incubatee social capital In order to measure incubatees’ individual social capital, we focus on the structure of their network of relationships. Network structure has been associated to two types of connections: bonding and bridging (Granovetter 1973; Putnam 2000; Lee 2009). Bonding social capital refers to the close ties and the closure that characterize relationships, and 16 development of social capital among incubatees as well as links between incubatees and other external agents. However, the effectivity of the manager as a promoter of each incubatee’s individual social capital as well as the incubator’s collective social capital depends on the managers’ proactivity. In the literature of human resources proactivity has been defined as an individual’s personal initiative to engage in behaviours that are self-starting, proactive, and persistent in overcoming barriers (Frese and Fay 2001; Glaser, Stam, and Takeuchi 2016). Proactivity or personal initiative refers to a behavioural orientation to go beyond assigned tasks (Frese and Fay 2001). In the context of incubator’ managers, we consider that proactive managers are those that go beyond what is formally required and are actively involved in transmitting a relational orientation to the incubatees. In fact, some managers are confined to acting as gatekeepers, are not very relation-oriented and their role in developing relationships is passive. In contrast, other managers are proactive and play an active role as intermediaries, facilitating contacts between incubatees and other agents such as consultants, advisors, coaches, or investors (Lewis, Harper-Anderson, and Molnar 2011; UKBI 2012). The manager’s proactivity would contribute to relational social capital. In order to optimize relationships inside the incubator, incubatees’ willingness to involve themselves in activities and to behave in a reciprocal manner is crucial to the success of the manager’s task (Vanderstraeten and Matthyssens 2012). Proactive managers will eliminate any barriers and obstacles that might prevent incubatees from accessing resources. In order to eliminate barriers, it is essential to stimulate reciprocity (Lyons 2000, 2002) as well as incubatees’ identity with their colleagues. Similarly, managers may build up networks and social interactions based on trust and friendship between the incubator tenants (Tötterman and Sten 2005). In fact, the manager could be the backbone of the incubator, 17 fostering a relational climate that eventually will influence the incubator’s and the incubatees’ business success. On this basis, we propose the following hypothesis: H5: Manager’s proactivity has a positive influence on the incubator’s relational social capital. On the other hand, managers’ proactivity may also stimulate the incubatee’s individual social capital. Managers may foster the frequency of contacts and cooperation between incubatees by organising interactive activities such as courses, conferences and networking events for incubatees (Chan and Lau 2005) and by striving to forge a positive working environment (Tamásy 2002). This aspect is vital since incubatees are afraid of their business ideas being stolen or copied by other tenants (McAdam and Marlow 2007; Vanderstraeten and Matthyssens 2012). All of these efforts not only contribute to improve the incubator’s relational social capital as explained before, but also to increase the chances for an incubatee to develop, individually, close and long-lasting ties with other incubatees, i.e., bonding social capital. As we have explained, university entrepreneurs are usually disconnected of external business networks. The proactive manager plays the role of a bridge that occupies the structural hole (Burt 1992) and connects incubatees with other networks. Through the manager, or the incubator’s management team, incubatees can initiate relationships with consultants, finance institutions, or business people from different industries (Bøllingtoft and Ulhøi 2005; Buche and Scillitoe 2007). Moreover, managers might have previous business experience or experience in the domain of incubators (Hannon 2005), thereby allowing them to provide incubatees with a variety of business contacts (Vanderstraeten and Matthyssens 2012). Therefore, 18 H6: Manager’s proactivity has a positive influence on the incubatee’s bonding (H6a) and bridging (H6b) social capital. Finally, the entrepreneur profile of the university that has promoted the incubator also can determine the development of social capital. Some universities, such as research universities, only generate knowledge, but not guarantee its dissemination. On the other hand, we may find entrepreneurial universities, which have the ability to transfer knowledge produced within the university into resources of economic and social utility (Etzkowitz 2003). The emergence of the entrepreneurial university gave universities a dual duty: to produce new knowledge but also to facilitate the transfer of technology and knowledge spill-overs (Audretsch 2014). In this regard, while some universities have a tradition of entrepreneurship and have experience in applying or commercializing academic research findings, other universities are novel in the creation and management of spin-offs. Professors, researchers and departments of entrepreneurial universities should adopt a system of values and believes which combines the traditional goals of the academy (teaching and interest in science itself) and business or entrepreneurial goals (Etzkowitz 1998; Clark 2004). This, at the same time, shall be transmitted to students. Entrepreneurial universities will have a positive attitude towards entrepreneurship and will have more experience in creating spin-offs, i.e., know-how and tradition in managing UBIs and providing them the adequate values. The incubators that belong to these universities would benefit from the experience and values transmitted by them, including the value of internal relationships. They will feel as part of an entrepreneurial institution. Therefore, it will be easier to create identity as a group and reciprocity between incubatees who come from entrepreneurial universities. All this lead us to propose the following hypothesis, 19 H7: Entrepreneurial universities have a positive influence on the incubator’s relational social capital. Figure 1 summarizes the proposed hypotheses. Insert here Figure 1 3. METHODOLOGY AND DATA COLLECTION 3.1. Method and sample selection Data were collected through an online questionnaire. When drawing up the questionnaire, we reviewed the academic literature on incubators and entrepreneurship and took into account UBI information by reviewing documents and communication with managers and incubatees located in Spain and the Netherlands. These steps allowed us to adapt the items to the specific research domain and to propose some ad hoc items. Once the initial version of the questionnaire was drawn up, we performed a pre-test to ensure content validity. The pre-test was personal and in situ with six incubatees of the Amsterdam Center for Entrepreneurship (ACE) Venture Lab, set up by the University of Amsterdam, VU University Amsterdam, and the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, in November 2013. As a result, we modified certain items so as to draft them in a clearer and more accurate manner and to avoid possible misinterpretation. The questionnaire was sent to incubatees in UBIs located in Spain and the Netherlands. The decision to opt for these two countries was based on the interest they created, the Netherlands with a longer and more innovative tradition of incubators and entrepreneurship compared to Spain. According to the results of Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2016/2017 Report, in relation to the nascent entrepreneur rate, Spain has been 20 placed 60th and the Netherlands in 33rd place in the ranking of 64 countries. Also because of the possibility of obtaining information concerning UBIs in both countries. Firstly, we determined the total number of UBIs in Spain and the Netherlands. The global population of university incubators in Spain is 53 and in the Netherlands 16. We contacted all the managers, explained the objectives of the study to them, and requested their collaboration to answer a brief questionnaire about the incubator’s programs and to deliver an online questionnaire to their incubatees. After two months and a second reminder, we received 101 questionnaires from the incubatees, 66 from Spanish incubatees and 35 from Dutch incubatees. By gender, the sample of incubates includes 72 males and 29 females, and by age, 15 less than 25 years old, 58 between 25 and 35 years old, and 28 more than 35 years old. These incubatees belong to 36 UBIs (27 from Spain and 9 from the Netherlands), that is, we have over half of the UBIs of each country represented in the sample. Nevertheless, we only received the answer of the managers for 28 incubation programs, so that we only could match incubatees and managers answers for 80 cases. 3.2. Measurement variables Incubatees’ bonding social capital was measured as the number of incubatees with which the incubatee maintains frequent and close contacts. The remaining items were measured with five-point Likert scales. Incubatees’ bridging social capital was measured by means of an ad-hoc scale with two formative items (an increased network of external relationships and development of networking abilities in the business world). The incubator’s relational social capital was measured as a second-order construct with three dimensions: trust, identity, and reciprocity (Nahapiet and Ghoshal 1998). Trust and identity scales were adapted from the 21 proposals of Chiu, Hsu, and Wang (2006) in the case of communities, and reciprocity scales was adapted from the proposal of Wasko and Faraj (2005). A second-order confirmatory factor analysis was performed to validate the multidimensional nature of the relational social capital. Then, each dimension was reduced to an index and the three dimensions were considered reflective indicators of relational social capital. Because of its specificity and the lack of other empirical studies on this subject, we created scales to measure the manager’s proactivity and entrepreneurial universities. Manager’s proactivity was measured by the managers (manager’s proactivity) and by the incubatees (perceived manager’s proactivity). Manager’s proactivity included three items that referred to the networking activities offered by the incubator (meetings, access to external networks and access to university services). Perceived manager’s proactivity was measured with a reflective scale of four items that indicate the incubatees’ perception about manager’s involvement and interest in promoting contacts and relationships in the incubator and with external agents. Entrepreneurial universities were measured with a three-item scale reflecting the university’s tradition in creating spin-offs. Neither did we find empirical works measuring the results of entrepreneurs in incubators, so we created a three-item scale to measure management efficiency, indicating whether the entrepreneur had become more efficient in different aspects (planning, management, and implementation). We included several control variables that can affect management efficiency: academic experience, months spent in the incubator, number of partners, and the existence of a coach. Table 2 shows the descriptive statistics. To evidence the homogeneity between Spanish and Dutch incubatees, we compared the means (t-test of means for independent samples) 22 and only found differences in items measuring entrepreneurial universities, with significantly higher values in the case of Dutch universities. The model was estimated using the SmartPLS 3.2.1 program (Ringle, Wende, and Becker 2015). To calculate the significance of the parameters, we used bootstrap re-sampling by substitution with replacement (1000 subsamples). Table 2 shows the factor loading and weights and reliability indicators. Insert here Table 2 As for the reliability and convergent validity of the reflective scales, average variance extracted (AVE) and composite reliability values are acceptable, and the loadings are significant and above 0.7, except for the control variable “proactive university”, where reliability values and loadings are lower. For the only formative scale (bridging social capital), we calculated the variance inflation factor (VIF) so as to discard multicollinearity. Following the Fornell-Larcker criterion, discriminant validity was assessed by the square root of the AVE being greater than the correlation with the other constructs. In the correlation matrix of latent constructs (Table 3) we observe that this condition is met in all cases. In addition, we calculated the heterotrait-monotrait (HTMT) ratio of correlations for each pair of constructs (Henseler, Ringle, and Sarstedt 2015). These values are shown above the main diagonal of the correlation matrix. The highest value is 0.681, below the critical value of 0.85. Insert here Table 3 In order to examine if common method variance (CMV) is a problem, first, we performed a Harman's one-factor test (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Lee, and Podsakoff 2003). Exploratory factor analysis with all the indicators gave five factors with an eigenvalue of 23 over 1 (total variance explained=79.7%), with a first factor explaining only 18.4% of variance. Since there is no single factor accounting for the majority of the covariance among the measures, the possible impact of common method bias is not critical in this research. 4. RESULTS Firstly, we estimated the model considering the incubatees sample. It means that manager’s proactivity was measured as it is perceived by the incubatees. The results of estimating the overall structural model are shown in Table 4. PLS-SEM considers SRMR (standardized root mean square residual) as a goodness of fit criterion. In this case, the SRMR value was 0.08. A value less than 0.10 is considered a good fit (Hair, Hult, Ringle, and Sarstedt 2017). Additionally, we conducted a path analysis using the AMOS v20.0 statistical program to check the robustness of our results and to offer a global goodnessof-fit measure. We previously reduced each variable to a measurement index, specifically the latent variable scores provided by PLS in order to use similar measures. The goodness of fit for the estimated model is adequate: 2(16)=22.753 (p=0.121); RMR=0.049; RMSEA=0.065; GFI=0.958; AGFI=0.856; CFI=0.965; NFI=0.904. Although the sample is too small to analyse independently data for each country, we performed a multigroup analysis to prove the inexistence of significant differences between them (Table 4). Although there is a significant difference for the path between bonding social capital and management efficiency, the coefficients are not significant. Secondly, we estimated the model considering the sample that contains manager’s answers. Although this sample is quite small (n=80), it allows us to incorporate manager’s proactivity as it is perceived by the manager. Therefore, we estimated the model again including the effects of both managers’ proactivity and perceived manager’s proactivity on relational social capital, bonding social capital and bridging social capital. Moreover, 24 we added the effect of manager’s proactivity on perceived manager’s proactivity. Results are shown in the last column of Table 4. In order to facilitate interpretation, significant relationships of this second estimation are displayed in Figure 2. Insert here Table 4 Insert here Figure 2 Results show there is no empirical support for hypothesis H1 which proposed that contacts inside the incubator help improve management efficiency (H1a is rejected), although bridging social capital does have a positive impact on management efficiency, thereby allowing us to accept hypothesis H1b. Nor is there any evidence to support the idea of the potential influence of the number of an entrepreneur’s incubator contacts (bonding social capital) on an increased number of incubatees’ business networks and their relational skills in the business world (bridging social capital). Therefore, the number of contacts within the incubator is irrelevant in terms of accessing external networks (bridging social capital) and in terms of business success. This result may indicate that the number of contacts is not the valuable resource for the incubatee, but the resources these contacts could provide. We do not find support for H3. The results do not support the influence of relational social capital on incubatee management efficiency. However, as conjectured in hypothesis H4, the relational social capital among incubator members fosters the number of close contacts which incubatees can establish (bonding social capital) and positively affects incubatee development of contacts outside the incubator (bridging social capital). Even if the incubator social capital has not a direct effect on business results, eventually it contributes indirectly to it as far as it improves the contacts with external agents. 25 The effect of manager’s proactivity, as it is perceived by the manager, on relational, bonding, and bridging social capital is not significant. However, we observe that incubatees’ perception of manager’s proactivity is positively related to actual manager’s proactivity. Moreover, perceived manager’s proactivity has a positive influence on relational social capital (H5). Likewise, the perceived manager’s proactivity has a positive influence on the incubatees’ creation of bridging social capital (H6b), although the effect on bonding social capital (H6a) is not supported. As for the entrepreneurial universities, it also affects the development of relational social capital inside the UBIs (H7). Finally, we discard the influence of the control variables (time in the incubator, academic experience, and partners) on management efficiency. Table 5 shows the indirect and total effects. These results indicate that incubatees’ bonding social capital, i.e., their number of contacts in the incubator depends on the existence of relational social capital between incubatees, and, also, indirectly, of the manager’s proactivity. Incubatees’ bridging social capital, i.e., the external relationships they develop while in the incubator, also depends on the relational social capital and on the university and the perceived manager’s proactivity. 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Estimated model (significant relationships) Incubator manager’s proactivity Entrepreneurial universitiesIncubator’srelational socialca p ital Incubatee’s management efficiency H4 Incubatee’ssocialcapital H 2 Bonding Bridging H 1 H 3 H 5 H 6  H 7  Perceivedmanager’s proactivity R2=0.072 Entrepreneurial universities Relationalsocial capital R2=0.327 Bondingsocial capital R2=0.111 Management efficiency R2=0.282 Bridgingsocial capital R2=0.334 0.282** 0.376*** 0.260** 0.399** 0.333** 0.531*** (*) p<0.05; (**) p<0.01; (***) p<0.001 Manager’sproactivity 0.301**