A Question of Evaluation: NBIA's Impact Assessment of Business Incubators

Abstract

The latest report on the impact of business incubators distributed by the National Business Incubation Association (NBIA) suffers from severe shortcomings that undermine claims being made for it. Claims of methodological improvements are spurious, as are those for "added value" of the study results over previous incubator impact studies. It is likely that these claims, however, will be used by NBIA and other promoters of business incubator projects to appeal to sources offending at all levels to support both capital and operating costs of such projects. Even though the latest study focused on a rather select subset of the incubator universe, 40 of the 50 incubators analyzed still have not been able to break even. NBIA still has a way to go before it can provide, or help others to produce, valid performance evaluations, performance benchmarking results, and management information that can help incubators attain financial self-sustainability as well as other performance benchmarks.