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Introduction
Recent advances in our limited knowledge of corporate incubators have demonstrated that these function as strategic tools for business and technology development for their parent corporations ([2] Becker and Gassmann, 2006; [13] Gassmann and Becker, 2006). Corporate incubators' role, as interface organisations channels, for the flow of resources, between new start-up companies, and the parent corporation. However, less attention has been given to the role of corporate incubator managers in this context - what their tasks are and how they solve challenges related to the corporate incubators' functions. The purpose of this study is to focus on these questions in the context of a hybrid corporate incubator. Research into the role of business incubators in general has focused less on management than on measurable value added by the incubator to start-up companies ([6] Colombo and Marco, 2002; [1] Allen and McCluskey, 1990, [5] Campbell and Allen, 1987). Incubators' social effects on business networks has been emphasized in studies of network activities among firms located in incubators ([4] Bøllingtoft and Ulhøi, 2005) and network facilitation by the incubator between the start-up companies and external resource providers ([31] Totterman and Sten, 2005). Common to many incubator studies is that they focus on the incubator's relationship with one group of agents, for example owners, new start-up companies or public agencies, whereas management research often describes managers' daily challenges in maintaining good relationships with different stakeholder groups simultaneously ([12] Freeman and McVea, 2005). This study focuses on the incubator manager's role in terms of management tasks and challenges of having multiple relationships to care for.
The case organization in this study, Kongsberg Innovation, is owned by private companies in the Norwegian town, Kongsberg, together with a public regional development office. Accordingly, Kongsberg Innovation is a hybrid combination of the corporate incubator and the non-profit incubator. According to [1] Allen and McCluskey (1990), public-private partnerships are hybrids that appear fairly frequently in their population of 127 incubator facilities (although no exact frequency is given). Apparently public-private ownerships have been overlooked as a separate context in subsequent empirical studies. Instead, recent advances in corporate incubator research analyse "pure" corporate incubators ([2] Becker and Gassmann, 2006) owned and governed by a single parent company on which they depend for critical resources....