There are many ways to tackle this question, but I can tell you how my own company, ROCeteer approached it.
The first thing to do is determine whether or not you want an Incubator or an Accelerator.
What is the difference, you ask?
An Accelerator will group together external teams for a predetermined period of time, giving the teams a core set of resources to help them succeed with their individual goals. Generally, an Accelerator will take some portion of equity in exchange for seed money during the process, but there are many different models.
An Incubator will often (not always) be within a single entity, where all the company/product ideas are related to a single goal. There will be a management team in place to facilitate all the projects and help steer them along.
For ROCeteer, we decided to create an overall infrastructure that would be able to support either an Accelerator or an Incubator. We would then be able to plug-and-play based on the needs of our clients. As our clients are typically entrepreneurial ecosystems, corporations, investment portfolios or governments, creating the system that is most advantageous to the needs of those types of entities was the most important for us.
After determining our market (as above) and our value proposition, its merely a matter of business development to find clients to fill the seats 🙂
Originally Posted: https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-create-an-incubator
Originally Posted On: 2015-02-01