Working Paper N. 11/2001 the Role of Development Agencies for the Entrepreneurial Promotion: Israeli Case Studies

National and local “economic development programs” – programs that provide assistance to individual businesses with tax or financial subsidies, or special public services, in order to increase local jobs or improve local businesses’ competitiveness – have become prominent and controversial. The paper illustrates the basic principles of development agencies that are not invariable and specific structures, rather “ideal-typical” structures that assume particular aspects only referring to a variety of local society answers’. In this sense, a tool as the enterprise incubator could foster the growth of entrepreneurs in regional contexts with a low level of entrepreneurial attitude. The definition of a model of incubator, through the analysis of a specific case study, the Israeli technological incubators, whose outline conditions, resources, vocations, obligations and their incidence on policies of entrepreneurships promotion in Israel are identified, help us to outline factors of success, direct and induced effects on regional contexts, possible new relations introduced among actors, also in a new informational economy perspective. The local context characters, both at human and social capital level and at institutional and infrastructure levels, become decisive factors for productive choices, overtaking sometimes the national level to link directly to global networks. In this way, it seems inevitable a transformation of both the aims and the organisation in a changing context. The role of development agencies has moved from promoting the local demand to structure involved in elaborating solutions in the socio-economic field. ∗ A draft of this paper has been presented at 41st European Congress of European Regional Science Association, Zagreb, Croatia, 29th August – 1st September 2001.