The Dutch-led NENSI project aims at creating a transnational NWE network of regional incubator centres to develop service support desks for young enterprises and improve accessibility to management services, in order to increase their chance of success in the long run. These incubators will be developed by 7 partners from the private and the public sector from Belgium, France, Ireland and the Netherlands. The objective is to establish a regional inventory of existing initiatives, methods and organisations in the field, set up service desks for entrepreneurs in the participating regions, and develop an IT system and evaluation model. The common support model, once up and running, will 17 be monitored and evaluated by the transnational support network, thereby facilitating more business opportunities across the NWE. As the partners mainly represent small and/or peripheral cities and regions, the project will contribute to a more geographically balanced development across the NWE for establishing new business. Achievements: Two basic types of incubators can be distinguished: service incubators focussing on enterprises in the pre-start and start period (type 1 incubators) and service incubators focussing on young, but already established and growing enterprises (type 2 incubators). To be able to provide a validated answer to the question whether or not business incubators contribute to the business success of (young) entrepreneurs, it is necessary to make a distinction between type 1 and type 2 incubators, to collect longitudinal data and to form a control group