I wonder how many realize that they could build the same business just as well on their own (assuming proper willpower, and all.)
Good quality founders give you access to experience and perspective that you simply cannot find elsewhere and a value that no amount of blog reading can substitute.
An incubator is definitively only as good as the founders in it (which presents an obvious catch 22) and EF has managed to attract some incredibly high quality applicants.
The EF program is too young for a large number of those applicants to yet have become experienced founders per-se but in terms of quality of people and focus on engineering, EF is streets ahead of anything else I've seen in London.
FWIW it's also far, far harder to build a quality business solo than it is if you surround yourself with other people who are also doing well and pushing you to do better. You are as they say the average of your five closest friends.
On this theory, the balance of power has shifted to investors, who prefer founders from an institution. And perhaps a certain generation of young adults welcomes this sort of structure more than others might.
Which isn't to say that incubators don't have great value for many people. They do. But they're not the only way to go about starting many businesses, you're correct.
[^1]: http://www.forbes.com/sites/venkateshrao/2012/09/03/entrepre...
On a related point, am I the only one who notices the language coming out of the Silicon Valley ecosystem (the war for talent, the need to identify star performers) and is reminded of Malcolm Gladwell's assessment of Enron's corporate culture (http://gladwell.com/the-talent-myth/)?