With more than seven decades of supporting entrepreneurs, today's business incubators are distinguished by their external networks. These networks of collaborators provide key resources, knowledge, and skills. Studies call on incubator managers to formalize the management of their networks, a practice that can generate a competitive advantage. However, research to date has been relatively silent on how to manage these external resources. To address this, the management practices of a top-performing business incubator in Canada were observed. Close to 50 individual interviews were conducted over a four-year period and theoretical concepts from the business incubation, network and social capital literature inspired the observed practices. The results show that network management is a shared responsibility between entrepreneurs, external stakeholders, and managers and formalizing external ties cannot be an all-purpose practice. As such, a theoretical framework is proposed to shed light on the dynamic nature of managing social capital. A management that is both relational and structuring brings out the trust and autonomy of people in situations of dynamic and, sometimes, constraining interactions. Highlighting these practices contributes to a more refined conceptualization of incubator management and, on a practical level, raises the importance of the human and relational dimensions in managing these changing environments.

凭借七年多的支持企业家，当今的企业孵化器以其外部网络而著称。这些合作者网络提供关键资源、知识和技能。研究呼吁孵化器管理者对其网络进行正规化管理，这种做法可以产生竞争优势。然而，迄今为止，关于如何管理这些外部资源的研究相对较少。为了解决这个问题，我们观察了加拿大一家表现最好的企业孵化器的管理实践。在四年的时间里进行了近 50 次个人访谈，来自企业孵化、网络和社会资本文献的理论概念启发了观察到的实践。结果表明，网络管理是企业家、外部利益相关者和管理者之间的共同责任，外部联系的形式化不可能是万能的做法。因此，提出了一个理论框架来阐明管理社会资本的动态本质。关系型和结构化的管理可以在动态的、有时是约束性互动的情况下增强人们的信任和自主性。强调这些实践有助于更加完善孵化器管理的概念化，并且在实践层面上提高了管理这些不断变化的环境中人力和关系维度的重要性。