Creating a successful business is difficult: it requires a lot of various skills as well as knowledge. Unfortunately, inexperienced founders often make poor decisions because of their lack of experience with the complex task of building a business.
To a certain extent, the mode of interaction within entrepreneurial networks is analogous to the way healthcare networks work. There is a patient (i.e. new venture) that is looking for good health (i.e. sustainable success on the market) but faces symptoms (i.e. key performance indicators) caused by illness or injury (i.e. new competitor) and looks for treatments (i.e. interventions). Also, different roles are involved: general physician, nurses, specialists etc. (i.e. business angels, coaches, market experts, consultants etc.). The key artefact for efficient communication and collaboration among these various stakeholders is the (electronic) health record. At sebis, we envision to transfer this idea of a health record to entrepreneurial networks. Our key hypothesis is that an electronic startup health record will help (university) incubators in their mission to accompany new ventures on their challenging road to potential success.
We propose an Adaptive Case Management (ACM) software that provides a repository of electronic startup health records and social network features to facilitate both the operational tasks of stakeholders as well as reflection at individual and aggregate level. For instance, startup advisors could use the envisioned system to monitor progress and maintain a single point of truth with all relevant information and artefacts as well as their history. Investors could use this structured information for due diligence. Founders could get recommendations for interventions (e.g. ideation workshops). One of sebis’ key assets and basis for our contribution is our strong background in the design and development of information systems. For InCoBate to succeed, we believe that it is crucial to get a deep understanding of the (social) practices and stakeholders within entrepreneurial networks.