Business incubation as an instrument of fostering new venture formation is widely discussedin the research field of entrepreneurship. Numerous aspects of Business Incubators (BIs) havealready been investigated in more depth: e.g. the organizational structure, funding, objectives,provided services, incubatee selection policy, impacts on the survival and growth of incubateefirms etc. So far, researchers focused their work on public-sponsored, private-sponsored, andnonprofit-sponsored BIs as well as on university-related BIs. In the case of UniversityBusiness Incubators (UBIs) research basically circulated around the question of how UBIscan support technology transfer. This paper focuses on a new type of UBI: the UniversityBusiness Pre-Incubator (UPI). UPIs are facilities that support embryonic businesses duringtheir planning stage by providing office space, consultancy and training, and mentoringservices.In the scope of a comprehensive support program of the German government called “EXIST –Existenzgruendungen aus der Wissenschaft” that started in 1998, a couple of Germanuniversities established pre-incubators to assist the development of new enterprises. Sodespite the lack of research literature concerning business-related pre-incubators, in practice,these institutions play an important role for German universities in fostering new ventures.This paper tries to make a substantial contribution to reduce the knowledge gap in theresearch area of UPIs. After defining the facility “University Business Pre-Incubator” basedon metaphorical considerations and the business incubation literature, the paper presentsresults from a national survey of UPIs in Germany. On the one hand these results show thatUPI’s organization differs in many aspects: size, age, planned time horizon, and total financialvolume. On the other hand similarities could be identified, such as: UPIs offer consultancy,training, mentoring and coaching services, set requirements for accessing the UPI program,have common target groups, and are integrated in
