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Introduction
This article is concerned with an area that has received little interest in entrepreneurship research: the role of the university incubator and student/graduate users. Despite the fact that an increasing body of work is developing around university start-ups and their growth in general, less is known about the subset of enterprises formed by SGSUs. Specifically, there is a dearth of research into their motivation to use, and attitudes towards, university incubators, in what is often considered to be the initial stage of new business formation. To date, most studies have used incubator managers as the central point of contact for survey data, which is somewhat limited, as they cannot represent the views of students or recent graduates ([32] Karatas-Ozkan et al. , 2005). In addition, less is known about the experiences and attitudes of users in the idea formulation process; whether they assume university incubator support as an extension of their status as, student or alumni; and what they have gained from the experience and what their future intentions are. The aim of this article is to contribute to our understanding of the university incubator in the UK from the perspective of their student/graduate tenants.
The shifting enterprise landscape
The UK's enterprise landscape resides in the context of multiple political, economic, social and technological factors including, research and innovation funding, physical and virtual networks, government departments and agencies, business support, R&D, learned societies and industry ([54] UK Trade & Investment, 2009; [57] Warry, 2006). Taken together, these factors contribute to a nation's competitiveness and the transformation of its people where, amongst other endeavours, innovative ideas are turned into action through new venture creation. However, successive UK governments have been criticsed for failing to weave these factors into a coherent industrial policy. In fact, in a leaked letter to the Prime Minister, the current Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, recently argued that the very term "industrial policy" has acquired a bad reputation in the UK as a result of misguided and clumsy interventionism in the 1970s[1] .
Setting aside the political rhetoric for a moment, we know that government intervention in entrepreneurship is a messy business leading to many unanticipated outcomes ([19] Gibb, 1996; [14] Culkin and Smith, 2000) and that simply...