Gatekeeper Networks, Knowledge Inertia, and Knowledge Performance in Business Incubators

Business incubators can provide network connection to incubatees, allowing incubatees to acquire many resources. Gatekeepers can facilitate the acquisition of external knowledge and the dissemination of internal knowledge. From gatekeepers’ characteristics, business incubator managers perfectly fit the role of gatekeepers. This paper introduces the gatekeeper role in business incubators to analyze business incubator knowledge performance (BIKP). Multi-agent simulation model is used to form the gatekeeper network, and the business incubator manager acting as the gatekeeper has the function of breadth intervention and depth intervention for the incubatees. The results indicate that moderate competition is necessary for incubatees. Second, the gatekeeper’s depth intervention is better than breadth intervention. Third, there is the horizontally S-shaped relationship between the level of effort of the gatekeeper’s depth intervention and the BIKP in equilibrium. Moreover, the gatekeeper’s interventions are optimal when incubatees have high knowledge inertia and low rates of mutual learning.