Fostering resilience of prospective startup businesses: a longitudinal study

The growth of startup businesses has received public attention worldwide. Incubation and acceleration programs initiated by universities, government agencies, and companies stimulate movements in the startup ecosystem to improve the success rate of the prospective startup. This paper aims to explain how business incubators nurture potential startups as new business ventures in a dynamic environment by relying on the organizational resilience theory. The study adopts action research using a case study approach involving a university-based incubation in Indonesia during 2014–2024. The main contribution of this study lies in the organization’s commitment to increasing the capacity of startups to succeed and strengthening the entrepreneurial ecosystem in the region following the three-phase framework: pre-incubation, incubation, and acceleration as a future reference for startup sustainability. The qualitative assessment of the study focuses on exploring affectionate elements: founders’ commitment to sustainability, teamwork solidity, and mentoring effectiveness by the incubator as promoter and catalyst of startup survival and resilience. The study critically reflects on startup founders’ behavioral changes, especially post-incubation. The phenomena indicate the variability of entrepreneurial orientation and mentality of a startup’s success or failure. Active contributions and fruitful synergies among parties, such as startup talents or founders, facilitators, mentors, angels, and ventures are essential for startups’ resilience and stakeholders’ expectations. The findings also provide insights into managing technological innovations and policy developments in startup businesses.