infoDev, the Department of Science and Technology of the Government of India, and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry organized a Global Forum on Business Incubation in New Delhi from October 14-19th, 2004.

The Forum brought together more than 300 innovators and entrepreneurs from over 50 countries, including representatives from the 43 developing country business incubators that received financial and technical support from the infoDev Incubator Initiative. The objective of the Global Forum was to share lessons among incubators and help them deal with the complex challenges of growing new businesses and promoting innovation in their countries. The Forum concluded with the launch of "The Global Network on Business Incubation for Development" to facilitate knowledge sharing. In a final Declaration, all participants called for concrete actions by governments, donors, the private sector and infoDev to create an enabling environment that is supportive of innovation and entrepreneurship. The Declaration contains a description of goals for a continued and strengthened cooperation on all levels – national, regional as well as international. The declaration also calls for concrete action by governments, donors, the private sector (industry and finance), and infoDev to support development of an environment supportive to business incubation and entrepreneurship.The Global Forum was organized along two strongly related parts:

• A Conference (October 14-16) on the opportunities and challenges of promoting innovation, entrepreneurship, and new business creation in developing countries, particularly in ways that harness the creative power of ICT both for traditional and new products and services
• A planning and networking Workshop (October 18-19) for business incubators, incubator associations, and others involved in promoting ICT enabled business incubation and innovation in developing countries.

Participants to the Global Forum discussed the difficulties they face in attracting investment to ICT-enabled new businesses in all sectors of their economies. Business incubators were championed by participants as an effective tool to promote these new businesses. Business incubators provide managerial, financial and technical support to fledging enterprises. They offer office space, equipment and other resources. They facilitate networking, cross-fertilization and exchange of ideas among innovators and new, as well as seasoned, entrepreneurs. The critical role of business incubators in supporting new business creation was highlighted by H.E. Kapil Sibal, who noted that "business incubators help by offering solutions for the common people to articulate their genius and turn them into commercial products. Especially in local and regional tiers of government, policy makers have turned to business incubation as a means of achieving a wide range of economic and social objectives, such as combating unemployment."

During regional and thematic breakout sessions, participants to the Global Forum identified several fundamental challenges facing ICT-enabled business incubation in developing countries. These challenges included:

• Insufficient national, regional and international networking opportunities to exchange best practices and lessons from experience.
• Difficulties in raising public and private sector awareness of the importance of business incubation.
• Limited knowledge resources for business incubator managers, their clients and financial organizations on the appropriate financial mechanisms, exit strategies and risks mitigation tools, which could facilitate investment in new small enterprises in developing countries.
• Scarce overall financial resources to help start-up businesses expand to the point where they can attract risk capital; and
• Inadequate access to expert advice on urgent issues facing business incubator managers.

The Global Forum had positive concrete and immediate results acknowledging the critical role business incubation incubators play in supporting new business development and the importance of ICT in facilitating entrepreneurship. These results included:

• The consideration by a telecommunications operator in India to provide broadband access to all Indian business incubators at a roughly 90% discount.
• A meeting between the representatives from China participating in the Global Forum and their local government authorities involving to raise awareness and encourage their support in expanding ICT-enabled business incubation.
• The formation of regional and sub-regional business incubation networks in Africa, East Asia, South Asia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America and the Caribbean. These networks will support the development of ICT-enabled business incubation initiatives and will seek to link these with existing initiatives participating in the "The Global Network on Business Incubation for Development." A first meeting of the United Business Incubators of Africa (UBIA) was held during the Forum and discussed plans for an upcoming conference on Business Incubation in South Africa in 2005.

About infoDev's Incubator Initiative: In 2001, with support from the Government of Japan, infoDev launched its Incubator Initiative aimed at fostering entrepreneurship and private sector development in developing countries. This Initiative is dedicated to establishing a network of incubators to facilitate the emergence and development of SMEs in developing countries that utilize ICT to improve performance, expand operations and exchange knowledge. Currently, the Initiative is supporting over forty incubators worldwide by: (i) providing the necessary financial and technical assistance to help existing business incubators improve and scale up their operations; (ii) facilitating the development of new business incubators in areas that are not currently served; (iii) encouraging innovative uses of ICT and entrepreneurship at the local-level and based on local needs; and (iv) establishing a network of knowledge sharing among business incubators that supports innovation and business creation in developing countries.

This Initiative, by supporting and building the capacity of a growing network of developing country incubators, provides a rich laboratory for understanding the fundamental challenges facing entrepreneurs in developing countries, and for designing approaches to address them. This Global Forum builds upon infoDev's Incubator Initiative, which supports ICT-enabled business incubation in developing countries, and provides the platform for expanding infoDev's Initiative into a global incubator network. The Incubator Initiative is a key component of infoDev's broader focus on "Scaling up Private Sector-led ICT innovation and services in developing countries." Developing countries face considerable challenges in promoting and sustaining innovation and new business creation, and in attracting broader private investment (local and international) to grow ICT-enabled businesses in all sectors of their economies. Through this Forum, the launch of a global incubator network and its Scaling Up program, infoDev seeks to help developing countries, and the international donor community, better understand and address these challenges.