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.