incubator

noun

1. Any apparatus used to maintain environmental conditions suitable for a reaction.
2. An apparatus used to maintain environmental conditions suitable for a newborn baby.
3. An apparatus used to maintain environmental conditions suitable for the hatching of eggs.
4. A place to maintain the culturing of bacteria at a steady temperature.
5. A support programme for the development of entrepreneurial companies.

   “So the question that is commonly asked is, why put a media incubator in a media desert and have it managed by a civil servant? This gets to the heart of the institutional support problem in Wales.”

   “Tech City is very big on "incubators" – places where startups are supposed to grow out of a collection of adjacent desks in a huge barracks of other adjacent desks – and on luring big firms to the East End of London.”