Business incubation aims to support economic growth by encouraging and assisting businesses to form, survive and thrive. In practice incubation is a highly flexible combination of business development processes, hard and soft infrastructure and entrepreneurial and knowledgeable people. Appropriate to most sectors of the economy, incubation helps selected entrepreneurs establish and grow businesses; encouraging and supporting innovation, development and change. 
 
There are around 300 incubation centres across the country, supporting 20 000 new businesses an all fields and figures show 98% of businesses from incubation centres succeeding compared to 50% of other businesses registered.  
 
These centres are often called 'Innovation and Enterprise' centres 
 
For more information go to the UKBI website.