Abstract
This thesis studies business incubators. There are currently 7,000 incubators worldwide. This population of organizations has grown rapidly over the past decade, contributing to the increasing dynamism of the entrepreneurial support environment. In response to this context, a more strategic research stream emerged in the literature in the early 2000s. Researchers in this field use concepts from strategic management to determine how incubators, now being challenged, adapt to remain competitive. We align with this research stream by leveraging the business model concept. This concept describes how organizations create and capture value to survive and grow in their industry.We extend existing research on the evolution of incubator business models by exploring a more comprehensive and process-oriented approach, a perspective that, to our knowledge, has been little studied in the literature. The RCOV model (Resources, Competences, Organization, and Value) facilitates the representation of the stages in the transformation process of business models. We use this model based on the theory of dynamic capabilities. According to this theory, certain capabilities trigger entrepreneurial processes that transform business models and enhance organizational performance.Two qualitative studies were conducted to determine how incubators develop dynamic capabilities and to understand the evolution of their business models. The first study, exploratory in nature, consists of 20 semi-structured interviews conducted with directors of French incubators. The second study is a multiple and longitudinal case study. Between April 2016 and February 2018, 135 semi-structured interviews, nearly 480 hours of non-participant observation, and document collection were carried out across four French incubators.The results highlight the presence of dynamic capabilities developed through an entrepreneurial strategy and micro-foundations at the individual, interactional, and organizational levels. These capabilities drive a continuous search for balanced hybridization between the public and private sectors in terms of incubators' competences, resources, and routines. Thanks to their hybridized resource base, incubators attract both public and private organizations. These partners contribute resources to co-lead entrepreneurial projects. Together with the incubators, they engage in co-creation and the development of new support mechanisms (acceleration programs, coworking spaces, hackathons, etc.). These collective entrepreneurial processes lead to the emergence of new business models that are both multi-sided and hybrid. These models enable incubators to attract and satisfy a larger number of entrepreneurs through the support mechanisms they develop while acquiring new financial resources from both public and private sources.One of the major contributions of this thesis concerns the definition of incubators. The collective entrepreneurial dynamic indicates that these organizations are no longer merely strategic but also entrepreneurial in nature.