Download: 15 Best Practices for Business Incubators & Accelerators

Apply Best Practices, Launch Startups Better

Running a business incubator or accelerator is not easy, and those in charge of organizing program activities work tirelessly to help entire cohorts of startups set up their companies, establish their brand identities, and then launch themselves with a solid business plan and processes. Startups in turn, depend on business incubators and accelerators for funding, mentoring, working space, and a positive outlook toward a bright, successful future. Startups also rely on programs to connect them with investors, media, and even additional talent. In short, these programs are vital to the innovation ecosystem. In fact, study after study shows that well-run incubators and accelerators make a long-lasting impact on the success and lifetime of their startup clients.

There is no perfect formula for running an incubation program, but flexibility is one key to success, as is providing and proving value to multiple players in the innovation ecosystem.

Our latest edition in our Insight Series is aimed at helping these impact-makers. Filled with “tips you can’t afford to skip”, the whitepaper identifies success recipes from top programs as identified by The World Benchmark Study 2017 – 2018.

Download for free: 15 Best Practices- To Make Your Business Incubator or Accelerator a Global Winner.

Ensuring Maximum Impact and Performance

Each incubator or accelerator has its own unique curriculum and mission statement. They differ greatly in personality, location, mission, and staff. However, what they all have in common is that each program must demonstrate effectiveness for their startup clients, their local ecosystem, and their own organization. These effects can be measured with the help of different quantitative key performance indicators – like the number of jobs their client and alumni startups have created – to the overall level of investment achieved. There are additional qualitative, experiential assessments as well. Whether a program has contributed to, for example, economic revitalization and a renewed interest in entrepreneurship, is another measurement of impact. One factor is certain, based on UBI Global’s own research – startups that participated in an incubation or acceleration program are much more likely to succeed.

59% of startups in benchmarked business incubation and acceleration programs survived for an average of 5 years, which is 15% longer than those that are not part of a program. Source: The World Benchmark Study 2017-2018 by UBI Global

Be a Global Winner- Don’t Skip These Tips!

UBI Global conducted extensive interviews with the CEOs, managers, and directors of 24 incubators and accelerators identified as the top programs globally in the World Benchmark Study 2017-2018. We published the results in “The Best Practices at University-linked Business Incubators and Accelerators” reports, presented in two volumes. Hailing from around the world, these case studies demonstrate the winning approaches in terms of set up, operations, business models, target audiences, and more.

In this edition of our Insight Series, we present the 15 tips we extracted from these pages of insights, to guide business incubators and accelerators to get – and stay – on the path of success. Bringing new elements into your organization can be challenging, so we have broken down what works into 15 approachable tips. We hope that applying them will help incubators and accelerators create value for their program and their local ecosystem. After all, an entrepreneur’s experience with his or her program leads to a lifetime of business ownership and a cycle of job creation. Providing the right foundation is crucial for the entire community!

Download for free: 15 Best Practices- To Make Your Business Incubator or Accelerator a Global Winner.

Insights we share with the innovation ecosystem about recipes for success, as learned from top incubators and accelerators are thanks to The World Benchmark Study. UBI Global is currently conducting the 5th iteration of this gold standard research initiative that measures the impact and performance of incubators and accelerators around the world. There’s still time to participate as a member of UBI Global’s interactive learning community.