4 - 10 May 2000

Pan-European business association to be based in Malta

by David Kelleher

Some of Europe's leading incubator companies, including a locally-based company have joined forces to launch BIA Europe, a pan-European association bringing together high-tech entrepreneurs. The association's corporate offices will be based in Malta and it will be headed by Jan Orsted. The association is now being legally founded and a management team has been employed and will soon begin the day-to-day work.

BIA Europe (www.BIAEurope.org) was launched this week, at the Tornado-Insider.com's Upstart Europe event in Paris, where over 2,000 people working within the digital economy met to examine the challenges facing high-tech entrepreneurs, demonstrating how to position e-businesses at the cutting-edge of high-growth Europe.

Business incubators foster start-up business and entrepreneurs by providing them with expertise and funding, including infrastructure, management, operational know-how and access to the market.

Europe's leading incubators are in the final stages of forming the association to inspire and support the business incubation community in Europe. The founding fathers include locally-based iWORLD Group, Cell Ventures/New Media Spark, CIR Lab, Gorilla Park, MSC and StartUp Factory. A number of other incubators have expressed interest in joining the association. BIA Europe aims to establish and develop business incubation as the key platform for new entrepreneurship in Europe.

The objectives are to create general awareness of the concept of business incubation, to ensure high standards of praxis within the incubator community, and to accumulate and make knowledge available to the community and to the public in general.

Incubation is a new business model that has already proven to be successful in the US where it has created hundreds of viable start-up companies and thousands of jobs within the new economy.

Naturally Europe is different, in culture, in business, in education and in any other respect. A Silicon valley or a Seattle high-tech industrial community where entrepreneurialism flourish does not, as yet, exist, nor do European universities nourish start-up business as much as their American counterparts do.

Many incubatees are already learning to operate under Europe's first generation of incubators. US studies reveal that 87 per cent of all incubated companies are operating successfully after the first three years compared to a general survival rate of around 20 per cent. There is a huge potential for the European economy, and the BIA Europe has been set up to meet the challenges of developing and supporting entrepreneurial initiatives.