Measuring Performance of Business Incubators : A Literature Review and Theoretical Framework Development

Business Incubation is one of the latest concept in promoting entrepreneurship in global economy. Concept which originated in 1958 at Batavia, United States is now hot buzz around the world. The present study provides a conceptual framework developed through identified strategic performance indicators (SPIs) used or suggested by authors for mapping performance of Business Incubators (BIs). The conceptual framework embarks SPIs both for BI management and incubatees which together constitute major stake holding in BIs. The SPIs have been identified from extensive literature review of correlated research articles from 1990 to 2017. The research is suggestive of that least number of authors have used IPRs as SPI in their PMS, frequently used SPI in literature is survival rate of incubatee firms. Intangible factors have not been given due weightage by authors in their PMS The study is also suggestive of that most of the PMS adopted in BIs are not holistic in approach as they ignore assessment of incubatees at various stages of BIP. A conceptual framework is proposed based on segregation of identified SPIs amongst incubator manager and incubatees. The framework depicts the need and importance of Operational performance indicators for each identified SPIs