Virtual Business Incubations: An Alternative Way to Develop and Service Peripheral Areas

This article examines possibilities to develop the service sector in a peripheral area by using virtual business incubations instead of traditional, location-based business incubations. The articleintroduces typical characteristics of physical business incubations and compares them with features that are possible to be provided also virtually. Then, using the tourism branch in Finnish Lapland as a basis for a case study, the article shows that virtual implementation of business incubations is in some cases either better or even the only possible way to provide services typical for business incubations. Furthermore, the article discusses how the logic of virtual business incubations provides a win-win or a win-win-win situation than a win-lose situation for the businesses involved: the establishment of a virtual business incubation between competing firms is able to create value in a way resembling the situation in multifaceted coopetition (Brandenburger & Nalebuff, 1996) without typical economic-geographical zero-sum game of traditional business incubations. The article shows both practical and theoretical importance of virtual incubations in business and in business research.