Early stage biotech companies and scientists interested in commercialisation need great accelerator programs, not more incubators.
Biotech companies and scientists who start out on the road to commercialisation may need an accelerator to bring out the entrepreneurial spirit. The incubator and accelerator models are conflated all the time in biotech, much to the fury of anybody who truly understands the terms. What distinguishes one from the other?
Much like any business accelerator, a bio-accelerator is a biotech-focussed program that should be designed to almost force early startups to generate real early momentum. This three- to four-month bootcamp in which you are pushed to sharpen your business plan ultimately leads to a ‘demo day,’ often classed as a display of the progress that has been made.
However, it’s easy to confuse an accelerator with an incubator: understandings of the terms can change completely in central Europe (Belgium and Holland, specifically), where the biotech industry has accepted the notion that incubation happens first. As a result, incubators in these area typically comprise laboratory facilities for small early stage companies, while a bio-accelerator consists of the next stage up in terms of a facility to harbour often rapidly growing staff numbers.
For the purpose of this discussion, its best to ignore these uses of the term.
We have a standard reply in the office to this question, and it usually ends in a sigh: bio-incubators and bio-accelerators are just somewhere to put your lab. Obviously, that’s no bad thing if you need it and can afford it. However, by any standard the name bio-incubator is a misnomer.
Lots of entrepreneurs such as don’t like business incubators for a whole set of reasons. While bio-incubators don’t deserve to all be painted with the same brush, the bottom line for what constitutes success for a biotech incubator is occupancy. They get the rent paid and in return they will make sure a company doesn’t have to worry about the gas (nitrogen or carbon dioxide) being shut off.
If the incubator is good,…