Developing a Framework for Evaluation of Incubators Performance

Business incubators are now recognized in both developed and developing countries as important instruments for promoting entrepreneurship development and technological innovation especially at the small and medium enterprise level. Development and proliferation of business incubators has generated an intense debate around their performance and usefulness between opponents and advocates of these organizations. Differing in perspectives, researchers have used different groups, point of view to evaluate incubators performance. They have also limited their studies to particular type of incubators. Reviewing relevant literature in Iran and the world, this article has provided an integrated multidimensional framework to evaluation of incubators performance. The proposed framework suggests the performance of incubators can be evaluated in four areas: Management and staff, infrastructure, services and outputs. Performance in management and staff can be assessed in terms of management functions and learning and growth, in infrastructure in terms of location and space, and facilities, in service area in terms of business start up and business assistance, and performance in output can be evaluated in terms of business (companies), products (and/or services) and people. To evaluate each area of performance, generic measures have been derived from literature. The proposed framework can be used as a useful tool and a guideline to evaluate incubators performance by their managers, stakeholders and sponsors, particularly in Iran, in order to internal and external benchmarking and rising competition among and promoting competitiveness of incubators.