Offering Housing
This service focuses on the possibility to offer infrastructure to small promising companies which need support in the initial phase of their activities. Among the different ways this service may be offered, a possible approach may be to seal deals with local or/and national governments in order to a have the financial support necessary to be able to offer office space and lab use at a competitive price or, even better, for free, when possible.
This approach may lead to the definition of a selection process which carefully chooses the most promising companies which shall benefit from this support. It shall be noticed that the possibility to host several small companies in the same building may offer several advantages, for example in terms of synergies. That is, small companies like small start-ups working in affine or totally different sectors may support each other giving rise to possible collaborations. They might end up starting new projects together benefiting from their expanded/combined insights and knowledge or they may just support each other during “corridor talks” or even with reciprocal consultancy support. In other words, a sort of side effect of this service may the implicit establishment of a small ecosystem.
Example: An example of a service in this area is the “incubator program” of DTI. This initiative targets start-ups and offers them free housing for maximum two years. In addition to this the start-ups also get a number of vouchers which can be spent with DTI in order to get the technical and non-technical support that they need. The presence of start-ups in the DTI facilities has the advantage to expose the start-ups to the different activities of DTI and therefore gives a better idea of how DTI can support them which again facilitates the choice of the other services that they can get from DTI. Finally, this program has the twofold advantage to offer visibility to start-ups since DTI is an acknowledged institution which can promote their product in the market and among large companies. Furthermore, the presence of potentially successful start-ups in the facilities of DTI increases their visibility and authority in the ecosystem.
