Mobile incubator: a social innovation making entrepreneurship accessible

In entre­pren­eur­ship, incub­at­ors are struc­tures that offer sup­port pro­grammes to help, accom­pany and accel­er­ate the devel­op­ment of new busi­nesses. How­ever, while they are import­ant for the social integ­ra­tion and rein­teg­ra­tion of people facing dif­fi­culties in life – from dis­ab­il­ity to com­plic­ated social situ­ations – they must also take into account the needs of bene­fi­ciar­ies and adapt to them. Hence the idea of a mobile incub­at­or that would travel and adapt to the con­straints of entre­pren­eurs in dif­fi­cult circumstances.

Bas­tien had an unstable child­hood marked by domest­ic viol­ence, place­ments in care homes, and early delin­quent beha­viour. After run­ning away from home sev­er­al times, he lived on the streets, deal­ing drugs and steal­ing. He became a fath­er at 17 and was imprisoned three years later. Upon his release from pris­on, he attemp­ted to sta­bil­ise his life, but faced a series of con­flicts, break­ups, and relapses into delin­quency: after anoth­er incar­cer­a­tion, his part­ner left him, and when his sen­tence ended, he lived on the streets and occa­sion­ally slept in hotels. How­ever, Bas­tien has a plan. He wants to open a Greek res­taur­ant with a friend, Maxime, anoth­er young home­less man who was placed in care at the age of six months and grew up in vari­ous shel­ters and foster homes. Maxime, whose adoles­cence was marked by run­ning away, viol­ence and stints in facil­it­ies for young offend­ers, wants to be his own boss. “I see myself get­ting a small flat and being my own boss. If I feel like work­ing tomor­row, then I’ll work. If I don’t feel like work­ing, I won’t work. There’s no one who’s going to call me and ask me where I am, all for £1,200 at the end of the month.” He ima­gines start­ing his own busi­ness with his girl­friend, “liv­ing a nor­mal life.”

This entre­pren­eur­i­al pro­ject emerges against a back­ground of extreme pre­car­ity: life on the streets, pris­on sen­tences, mul­tiple breaks with edu­ca­tion­al, pro­fes­sion­al and fam­ily insti­tu­tions. Without access to tra­di­tion­al employ­ment path­ways, entre­pren­eur­ship becomes a route to self-empower­ment. It is motiv­ated by the quest for autonomy as an attempt to rein­vent one­self. This desire to start a busi­ness is marked by a lack of resources. These home­less young people seem very far removed from the mater­i­al and social con­di­tions that would allow them to launch an entre­pren­eur­i­al pro­ject in a con­ven­tion­al set­ting: lack of fin­an­cial, social and sym­bol­ic cap­it­al, as well as res­id­en­tial, leg­al and emo­tion­al instabil­ity. They are part of a logic of sur­viv­al entrepreneurship.

Alice and Gab­ri­el are entre­pren­eurs with dis­ab­il­it­ies, which severely lim­it their mobil­ity. Alice notes that “the neg­at­ive aspect, of course, is get­ting around.” For her, the best prac­tice is to “lim­it it as much as pos­sible.” Gab­ri­el has always been in the habit of hav­ing some of his ser­vice pro­viders come to him, while Mar­wa finds it dif­fi­cult to move around with her elec­tric wheel­chair in her incub­at­or. Finally, Vin­cent is visu­ally impaired and works mainly in an incub­at­or: “I nev­er know if I’m on the left or the right,” he explains. “I find it dif­fi­cult to find my bear­ings, espe­cially with all the technology.”

Busi­ness prac­tices are strongly influ­enced by the need to adapt to phys­ic­al or logist­ic­al con­straints. Dis­ab­il­ity does not make it impossible to be an entre­pren­eur, but it does have a sig­ni­fic­ant impact on organ­isa­tion­al and spa­tial choices. As such, entre­pren­eurs devel­op act­ive strategies to work around these con­straints: travel is avoided or reduced. And des­pite the integ­ra­tion of entre­pren­eur­ship sup­port mech­an­isms, envir­on­ments are not fully inclus­ive. Access­ib­il­ity is not lim­ited to enter­ing a build­ing but also involves the abil­ity to inter­act fully with the work­space. The tech­no­lo­gic­al envir­on­ment is also a factor in func­tion­al exclu­sion. Incub­at­ors can repro­duce forms of exclu­sion through their archi­tec­ture or digit­al design. Entre­pren­eur­ship is hampered by stand­ard­ised envir­on­ments. How­ever, it should be aware of the diversity of abil­it­ies. True inclu­sion requires think­ing of the work­ing envir­on­ment as an eco­sys­tem that is phys­ic­ally, cog­nit­ively and digit­ally accessible.

This is why social innov­a­tion is based on bring­ing togeth­er people who are com­mit­ted to solv­ing social or eco­nom­ic prob­lems, with the aim of improv­ing people’s well-being. It har­nesses indi­vidu­al and col­lect­ive cre­ativ­ity to design new, effect­ive and inclus­ive solu­tions that respond to unmet social needs in the form of innov­at­ive prac­tices, approaches, inter­ven­tions or products. The cre­ation of a mobile incub­at­or is a social innov­a­tion tar­get­ing spe­cif­ic needs iden­ti­fied in cer­tain pop­u­la­tions, par­tic­u­larly home­less young people and people with dis­ab­il­it­ies. These pop­u­la­tions face exper­i­ences of stig­mat­isa­tion, exclu­sion or pre­cari­ous liv­ing con­di­tions, and encounter obstacles on their path to inde­pend­ence, par­tic­u­larly when they aspire to become entre­pren­eurs. In addi­tion to mater­i­al dif­fi­culties, such as prob­lems of mobil­ity, access­ib­il­ity or geo­graph­ic­al isol­a­tion, they also face sym­bol­ic bar­ri­ers such as social dis­qual­i­fic­a­tion or weak social and/or eco­nom­ic cap­it­al. How­ever, des­pite these con­straints, some people from these pop­u­la­tions express a desire to become entre­pren­eurs or devel­op their own businesses.

The mobile incub­at­or sup­ports entre­pren­eur­i­al ini­ti­at­ives led by people who may be isol­ated from eco­nom­ic chan­nels, while adher­ing to con­di­tions based on social justice principles.

In light of these find­ings, a mobile incub­at­or – i.e. a flex­ible and adapt­able mobile facil­ity – appears to be a viable altern­at­ive, as it allows sup­port ser­vices to be brought to the people them­selves, by invest­ing in their liv­ing envir­on­ments and com­munit­ies. Wheth­er oper­at­ing on the street, with­in asso­ci­ations, in shel­ters or at home, this kind of incub­at­or would offer geo­graph­ic­al, social and sym­bol­ic prox­im­ity, which is con­du­cive to build­ing trust. It would enable the decent­ral­ised pro­vi­sion of train­ing, ment­or­ing, pro­ject form­al­isa­tion sup­port and access to fin­ance, adap­ted to the pace, con­straints and aspir­a­tions of the bene­fi­ciar­ies. This sys­tem would be based on a mobile team of entre­pren­eur­i­al sup­port pro­fes­sion­als trained in the chal­lenges of pre­cari­ous­ness and inclu­sion. Through their pres­ence in the field, these facil­it­at­ors could act­ively medi­ate between the people they sup­port and exist­ing entre­pren­eur­i­al ecosystems.

In this way, the mobile incub­at­or would not only help to identi­fy and sup­port entre­pren­eur­i­al ini­ti­at­ives led by people who may be isol­ated from eco­nom­ic chan­nels but also redefine the very con­di­tions for access to entre­pren­eur­ship, pla­cing sup­port at the heart of a social justice approach. Ulti­mately, this mobile incub­a­tion mod­el con­trib­utes to the demo­crat­isa­tion of entre­pren­eur­ship, build­ing an access­ible, equit­able form of entre­pren­eur­ship rooted in people’s lived real­it­ies, by pro­mot­ing their capa­city for action.