The Possibility of Establishing an Iraqi University Business Incubator and Its Expected Impact on Entrepreneurship: An Analytical Study in a Sample of Iraqi Universities
Lotfi Khrifech
Faculty of Economics and Management, University of Sfax, Tunisia.
Ammar Kasim Al-Ani *
Faculty of Economics and Management, University of Sfax, Tunisia.
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
Aims: This research aims to determine the extent to which Iraqi universities can establish university business incubators that affect the orientation of university students in a sample of Iraqi universities towards entrepreneurship.
Study Design: The research adopted the descriptive analytical method to describe the research variables and interpret the results.
Place of Study: This research was applied to a sample of 11 Iraqi government engineering and agricultural universities in northern, central and southern Iraq, which were selected due to their importance in providing the industrial and agricultural sector in Iraq with skilled human resources and project ideas that promote economic growth, as well as having university incubator units that seek to activate them.
Methodology: A sample representing the indigenous community was selected. Its size reached (160) individuals from the administrative leaders, heads of departments and teaching staff in the researched universities. The researcher relied on an electronic questionnaire designed with (kobotoolbox) as the main tool, and a set of statistics was used, represented by (mean, standard deviation, coefficient of variation, simple regression), and the research data was analyzed using (SPSS V.28).
Results: The research results showed a positive moral relationship to between all dimensions of university business incubators on entrepreneurship at the level of Iraqi public universities, and all research hypotheses were acceptable.
Conclusion: The findings indicate that there are possibilities for the Iraqi universities discussed to activate the work of university business incubators at an average rate that can be worked on and developed through the adoption of models of work mechanisms to benefit from international experiences in this field.
Keywords: University business incubators, entrepreneurship, economic growth