In Art. 2, paragraph III-A, Law No. 13,243/2016, better known as the Legal Framework for Science, Technology and Innovation, defines a business incubator as:
“an organization or body that aims to promote or provide logistical, managerial and technological support for innovative and knowledge-intensive entrepreneurship, with the purpose of facilitating the founding and development of companies whose distinctive feature is carrying out activities devoted to innovation;”
Unirio's Innovation Policy, approved by the University Council, provides for the setting up of business incubators at the university. Approval of the EMPREENDE project, by FAPERJ (Carlos Chagas Foundation for Support to Research in the State of Rio de Janeiro) in 2021, provided the resources that made it possible to set up the incubator. Among the commitments and goals to be achieved is the establishing of a business incubator and the incubation of 20 business ventures during the project’s two-year duration. The companies to be incubated according to the provisions of the project approved by FAPERJ are technology-based companies in the fields of education, creative industries, public administration and health. In the proposal, they were described as deep techs, which are defined as startups involving scientific risk for their product/process to function or technologies that add to the scientific risk or discovery that they are solutions to the world's fundamental challenges and significant problems.
The setting up of the Unirio Incubator is an essential process to serve one of the project’s four transversal lines of activity – that of “Business incubation and acceleration”.
The incubator was founded by the office of the university chancellor, through approval of GR Resolution No. 1, of January 30, 2023.
For implementation of the incubator, the coworking format was chosen, taking into consideration the following factors: