Résumé
Objectives: This paper is focusing on the strategic alignment within incubators generate by dynamiccapabilities. The aim is to understand how incubators adapt their strategy in order to face a changingenvironment. Within the literature, if incubators’ strategies have been studied, we still don’t know whichorganizational capabilities drive their evolution in order to survive in a dynamic environment. This papertries to fill this theoretical gap.Literature review: Incubators are organizations that support entrepreneurs to improve the chance ofyoung firms’ survival. Within the literature, scholars highlight that these organizations are positioned ina dynamic environment. The latter urges them to evolve. A strategic perspective developed in theliterature detailed incubators’ strategies and their transformations. The dynamic capabilities theory canhelp to deepen the understanding of these transformations. Academic works explain that somestrategies help to develop dynamic capabilities, organizational abilities that drive evolutions. In return,these capabilities generate a strategic alignment to create more adapted strategies to face theenvironment.Method: We did a longitudinal multiple case study (1) to explore the existence of incubators’ dynamiccapabilities and (2) the strategic alignment they cause. Four incubators have been studied duringalmost two years. At the end of this research, we collected data from 125 interviews, 480 hours ofobservations and documents.Findings: Our findings highlight an unexpected collective strategic alignment. The incubator’s dynamiccapabilities drive it thanks to the involvement of incubators’ partners. This collective dynamic generatesthe adaptation of the incubators’ strategy. Within a resource scarcity environment, incubators studiedneed financial partners to develop projects in order to adapt. Incubators implement an entrepreneurialstrategy, based on the development of entrepreneurial projects (new incubation models). This strategyleads to the creation of dynamic capabilities. They permit to develop entrepreneurial projects withpartners. The incubators’ managers offer public or private partners to participate to these projects toacquire new resources (funds, network, human resources). In exchange of these resources, partnersobtain advantages (competences development, new source of revenue, new ideas of business). Tosustain this partnership initiated by the directors, a partnership strategy is finally implemented at anorganizational level within the incubators. This strategic alignment aims to ensure the incubators’survival.Value and implications: This paper offers theoretical contributions. A first contribution concerns thecollective dynamic that structure incubators’ dynamic capabilities and strategic alignment. The literaturemainly studies both phenomena as internal phenomena. This paper argues they can also be generatedat inter-organizational level. A second contribution deals with the consequences of these dynamiccapabilities and the strategic alignment. They lead to an accumulation of new incubation models withinincubators. When the literature describes incubators with a unique support program, this accumulationcreates a new generation of incubators that multiplicate programs to attract funders. A third contributionconcerns the entrepreneurial strategy of this new generation of incubators. It permits to underline thatincubators are now entrepreneurial organizations, when the literature defined them as strategicorganizations.