Coordination, Monitoring, and Impact Evaluation of Technology Incubators in Nigeria

2. Operation Of Technology Incubators

Job creation is usually one of the main underlying purposes of incubator support for new business formation, especially of Technology-based firms. Incubators can also play an important role in strengthening co-operation between public and private actors in regional economic development. Technology incubators usually have the following main objectives:

• 1.

  Economic development;

• 2.

  Technology commercialization;

• 3.

  Property venture/real estate development; and

• 4.

  Entrepreneurship.

Like other types of incubators, they provide their tenants with some services including physical infrastructure (office space, laboratories), management support (business planning, training, marketing), technical support (researchers, data bases), and access to financing (venture capital funds, business angel networks), legal assistance (licensing, intellectual property) and networking (with other incubators and government services).

3. Evaluation Benchmarking For Incubator Operation And Performance

In their paper present at the 16^th International Conference on Business Incubation, Costa-David et al (2002) listed efficiency, effectiveness, relevance, utility and sustainability as Key Best Practice Issues, which each incubator should strive to address in their operations. A number of factors, which would influence the extent to which the best practices could be achieved, were also identified. These were those factors relating to the setting up and operating incubators; key incubator functions, management, and promotion; and performance management, i.e. evaluation of incubator services and impacts. Performances of the Nigerian incubators as provided by various reports were not benchmarked against any standards. However, in this study as much as they may be applicable, the performance drivers, i.e. key operational indicators, and the benchmarks used by Costa-David et al (2002) in the evaluation of the performance of business incubators in the European Union, would be used. These are in Setting Up and Operating Incubators, Key Incubator Functions, Management and Promotion and Evaluation of Incubator Services and Impacts.