Abstract The past years have seen a rising number of initiatives to foster water-related innovations around the world. Many of such initiatives take the incubation approach to support individuals or entities with potential for developing marketable water innovations. Despite the growing research on incubation, the innovation processes of incubatees - which are generally intertwined with the incubation process itself - have arguably received the least attention of researchers. Using the process perspective to innovation, this paper sheds light on the issue of how incubated innovators manage their innovation processes and the extent to which these processes are influenced by the incubator support. Empirical evidence was collected from 12 water innovators supported by VIA Water, a Dutch programme on water innovation in Africa. The study finds that innovation activities of incubated water innovators during the period preceding the incubation process are in essence informal, hardly planned and with little focus. The incubator support enables innovators to innovate systematically, notably by maintaining linkages between the different phases of the innovation processes, and to build convincing innovation cases.

中文翻译：

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打开创新孵化黑匣子：流程视角

摘要 在过去的几年里，世界各地为促进与水相关的创新而采取的举措越来越多。许多此类举措采用孵化方法来支持有潜力开发适销对路的水创新的个人或实体。尽管对孵化的研究越来越多，但孵化器的创新过程——通常与孵化过程本身交织在一起——可以说是最不受研究人员关注的。本文从创新过程的角度，阐明了孵化创新者如何管理他们的创新过程以及这些过程在多大程度上受到孵化器支持的影响。从荷兰的非洲水创新计划 VIA Water 支持的 12 名水创新者那里收集了实证证据。研究发现，在孵化过程之前的阶段，孵化的水创新者的创新活动本质上是非正式的、几乎没有计划的、没有重点的。孵化器支持使创新者能够系统地创新，特别是通过保持创新过程不同阶段之间的联系，并建立令人信服的创新案例。