Innovation projects incubation and mentorship program

Abstract

The Russian project has more difficulties with the search of a good mentor than investments. There is a small quantity of successful entrepreneurs, who built their own business and are ready to share their experience not only through the TV, but directly with a certain project team.The article considers the foreign experience of mentor and project team cooperation, identifies the main areas and features of this cooperation. A survey among the residents of the Nizhny Novgorod Innovation Business Incubator revealed the pricipal characteristics of a mentor and criteria the mentor has to match. The author developed an algorithm of forming a mentoring pool that includes five main steps. The offered algorithm may have a positive impact on the innovation projects development process and improve the innovation projects incubation process, solving following problems: 1. a lack of a necessary expertise of a project team. 2. а little experience of a project team in the sphere of promoting their own business and producing goods and services. 3. a lack of necessary contacts for promoting the project. 4. a lack of necessary expertise of business incubator specialists.The results of conducted research show the qualities the mentor has to have in order to work with project teams. They are following: • High education in economics or mechanics • best practices in business • age of 30-50 years old (the criteria is least of all and may not count at all in the case if other criterion are matched) • an ability to spend a lot of time with the team in the beginning of a cooperation and less time during follow-up meetings. • a skill to determine the main directions of company’s activity.• an acting businessmen or a consultant with best practices of entrepreneurship.• owning or the experience of owning mid-sized business.