Performance indicators for technology business incubators in Indian higher educational institutes

Purpose: The paper aims to review existing performance indicators in technology business incubators (TBIs) and propose some new indicators with a focus on incubation activities in higher educational institutes (HEIs) of India. Design/methodology/approach: Performance indicators of various types of incubators were identified from research papers followed by interview, consultation and suggestion from experts of the subject. Nature of interrelationship between the identified indicators has been established with the help of Interpretive Structural Modelling methodology and Matrice d’impacts croisés multiplication appliquée á un classment analysis. Findings: Number of ideas came for screening and number of ideas converted to start-ups, survival rate of incubatees is the indicators which have the highest driving power followed by time taken in screening an idea and number of failed or rejected ideas returned back into incubation. Few indicators (driving indicators) are affecting performance of other indicators as well. Research limitations/implications: Some performance indicators are proposed which can be used for measuring performance of technology incubators in India. The actual implications will be known when these findings are used to assess performance of some technology incubator. This also is the limitation of the study that some cases can be included to validate the findings of this research. Practical implications: A total of 15 performance indicators for measuring performance of TBIs in Indian HEIs have been proposed. The proposed indicators will help incubator management to prioritize the efforts and resource allocation. Social implications: TBIs are looked upon as mechanism for promoting entrepreneurial culture in Indian HEIs. Their success is well linked to growth of society. This research will help technology incubators to identify the most important factors in incubation process. Performance improvement will directly affect society in whole. Culture of IEE (Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Employment ) can be achieved through technology incubators Originality/value: Identification of new indicators for performance measurement of incubators in Indian HEIs is the novelty of this research. This has a lot of value due to multilevel hierarchy model.