How Government Policy Shapes Business Incubation and Acceleration Systems: Insights from National Policy Frameworks

Call for Papers – How Government Policy Shapes Business Incubation and Acceleration Systems: Insights from National Policy Frameworks

Journal: Technovation
Publisher: Elsevier (
Journal metrics: Impact Factor 10.9, CiteScore 19.5

Submission window: 16 March 2026 – 30 September 2026
Target publication: Late 2027

This special issue investigates how government policy architectures shape business incubation and acceleration systems, including business incubators, accelerators, science parks, technology hubs, and other organised innovation spaces. Rather than assessing single programmes in isolation, the SI asks how national, regional, and local policy frameworks determine the design, evolution, and performance of these ecosystems, and how they support technology commercialisation, mission‑oriented innovation, and venture creation.

Why this issue matters

• Incubators and accelerators have moved from niche support tools to core delivery platforms for innovation and entrepreneurship policies, especially in domains such as AI, deep‑tech, climate transition, health, and advanced manufacturing.

• Scholarly work often focuses on programme performance and services, but less on how policy instruments, governance, evaluation regimes, and strategic missions configure incubation and acceleration as systems.

• Policymakers frequently “scale what works” without robust comparative evidence on why similar instruments yield different outcomes across institutional contexts and over time. This SI aims to build system‑level theory that links policy design to ecosystem outcomes and policy learning.

Core themes and research directions

The SI welcomes conceptual, theoretical, and empirical contributions that explicitly connect innovation policy with incubation and acceleration systems. Priority is given to multi‑level, cross‑national, and mixed‑methods designs.

Key thematic directions include:

• Incubators and accelerators as embedded policy instruments

  • How to conceptualise incubators and accelerators as components of national or multi‑level policy architectures rather than isolated organisations.

  • How policy choices (e.g., mission‑orientation, sectoral targeting, funding schemes) shape the design, specialization, and positioning of incubation/acceleration models.

• Governance, coherence, and learning in incubation systems

  • How governance arrangements (e.g., public–private partnerships, multi‑stakeholder boards, evaluation regimes) affect system coherence, accountability, and policy learning.

  • The impact of decentralised vs centralised governance on autonomy, innovation, and responsiveness to regional or sectoral needs.

• Policy choices and system‑level outcomes

  • How national‑level decisions (on mission‑oriented agendas, technology priorities, and risk‑sharing) affect resource flows, scale‑up dynamics, inclusion, regional equity, and mission achievement.

  • Case studies comparing similar policy instruments across countries (e.g., “scale‑up what works”) and explaining different performance trajectories.

• Methodological and evaluative challenges

  • Improving measurement and evaluation of incubation and acceleration, including additionality, counterfactuals, long‑term outcomes, and unintended consequences.

  • Designs that address endogeneity, selection bias, and programme–system interaction (e.g., panel‑based, multi‑country comparative, or mixed‑methods approaches).

• Resilience, adaptation, and transformation

  • How external shocks (e.g., COVID‑19, geopolitical shifts, supply‑chain disruptions, technology‑sovereignty concerns) test the resilience and adaptability of incubation and acceleration models.

  • The role of policy in supporting strategic autonomy, risk allocation, and public–private coordination under uncertainty.

• Emerging and developing‑economy contexts

  • How institutional capacity, policy coherence, and ecosystem maturity in the Global South affect the design and effectiveness of incubation and acceleration.

  • Policy learning, adaptation, and “reverse innovation” in emerging‑economy incubation systems.

Guest editors

• Sarfraz Mian, SUNY Oswego, USA

• Wadid Lamine, University of Ottawa, Canada

• Bart Clarysse, ETH Zurich, Switzerland

• Rosa Grimaldi, University of Bologna, Italy

For SI‑specific inquiries, contact: Sarfraz Mian at sarfraz.mian@oswego.edu

Submission details

• Submission portal: Editorial Manager for Technovation:
  https://www.editorialmanager.com/technovation

• During submission, select article type: VSI: Policy Frameworks.

• Important dates:

  • Submission start: 16 March 2026

  • Submission deadline: 30 September 2026

  • Expected start of online publication: February 2027

• All manuscripts must comply with the journal’s Guide for Authors:
  https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/technovation/publish/guide‑for‑authors

Papers selected for the SI should clearly:

• Ground the analysis in innovation‑policy and entrepreneurship‑ecosystems theory,

• Offer high‑quality evidence from multiple countries or policy cycles, and

• Provide actionable insights for policymakers, programme designers, and ecosystem managers.

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