Abstract
Business incubators are a major tool in entrepreneurial eco-system of any country and forms the backbone of economic development initiatives. One of the greatest adaptations of business incubators came through universities especially public sector universities. This is due to the university's understood responsibility of supporting science and society development and ultimately providing all the new businesses' requirements in science and technology. Saudi Arabia has taken robust measures to develop and improve the local entrepreneurial eco-system by establishing and nurturing business incubators, especially university business incubators. In a small frame of time, Saudi business incubators have produced many innovate solutions for the technology, economic and social challenges. Due to multifaceted functionality and lack of standard evaluation criteria the business incubator performance became very important topic in Saudi Arabia. The purpose of this research is to develop critical success criteria for business incubators in Saudi Arabia. Survey methodology was employed to collect the data. Data were analyzed in many ways. Firstly, based on the survey results, list of success criteria for business incubators performance was presented. Secondly, descriptive analysis shows that top three critical factors include (a) coaching and mentoring hours, (b) number of services and supports offered; and (c) access to funds in terms of total attractive investment. While the least important factors considered were (a) affiliation with the university, (b) time limit to tenancy, and (c) numbers of IPOs launched. Thirdly, factor analysis summarizes all the critical success factors for university business incubators and culminates into five big factors, including (a) support services; (b) network support; (c) financial support; (d) economic development;(e) alumni success. Finally, cluster analysis shows there are two major cluster groups in the data: (a) ‘employees’ of the incubators and (b) 'incubatees'. This research provides guidelines and critical success criteria for business incubators operating in Saudi Arabia or elsewhere.
Highlights
Over the past two decades, Saudi Arabia has been actively engaged in educational expansion and investment
The data was analysed in three stages; a) descriptive analysis; b) exploratory factor analysis, c) cluster analysis multiple regression was used to investigate the effects of consumer’s personality on the usage patterns of mobile phone services
Result of descriptive analysis shows top three critical factors include (1) competence development: coaching and mentoring hours (M=3.87); (2) access to funds: total attractive investment (M = 3.84) and (3) competence development: number of services and support (M = 3.81). These findings are true reflection of incubatees looking for mentorship and coaching, access to funds and general services offered by the University business incubator (UBI)
Summary
Over the past two decades, Saudi Arabia has been actively engaged in educational expansion and investment. As a result of this direction from the Government, many graduated students from different fields and specializations have graduated. It is implausible that the Government will provide the required jobs for all those graduated students. The private sector in Saudi Arabia is not developed enough to address this gap between the Government and the huge number of graduated students. As a solution to this problem, the Government has developed a new initiative to establish a business incubator as part of universities throughout the Kingdom. The incubators have been increased very rapidly after launching the 2030 Vision by the Government of Saudi Arabia. There are over 35 business incubators working under the universities as non-profit organizations. Different names are assigned to these incubators, such as ‘business incubators’, ‘accelerators’ ‘accelerated business centers’, and ‘business hub center’
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