Four-stage incubation model for university innovation and entrepreneurship incubator: an empirical study

Aiming at the problems such as service homogenization and ambiguous stage intervention in current university innovation and entrepreneurship incubation platforms, this research constructs a four-stage incubation model of "seedling selection - seedling planting - seedling cultivation - seedling transplantation". Grounded in the resource-based theory, life cycle theory, and service-dominant logic, this study uses 130 projects from the incubation platform of Guangzhou Vocational and Technical University of Science and Technology as samples and conducts empirical tests through methods such as multiple linear regression and hierarchical regression. The results indicate that the core service elements in each stage (for example, the precision of creative screening in the seedling selection stage and the technical resource support in the seedling planting stage) have a significantly positive impact on the outputs of the corresponding stage (such as the passing rate and the prototype iteration speed). The stage assessment mechanism plays a positive moderating role in the service transmission effect. This model has increased the three-year survival rate of projects by nearly 20 percentage points. This research offers references for improving the theory of university incubation and enhancing the practical effectiveness.