| Key success factors of technology incubators in North Rhine-Westphalia | |
| Planning | Avoid excessive cost when constructing or converting the building. In several cases, architectural and urban planning considerations overwhelmed economic considerations, leading to an unfavorable cost structure (e.g. to little usable space in relation to total space), thus making earning the cost of maintenance and depreciation difficult. |
| Think of additional offers to new businesses, apart from space, as early as possible. This not only refers to typical incubator services, such as secretarial support, meeting rooms, etc., but also to elements such as close contact to financing institutions and other service providers. | |
| Make sure that the incubator is compatible with the incubation potential in the region. Do not oversize it, so that a pressure may emerge to attract mainstream companies. Rather make sure that the center can easily and without loss of architectural quality be expanded. | |
| It is useful to have an incubator and a high-tech industrial estate next to each other, and have them run by the same developer. This makes the incubator more attractive, reduces the uncertainty for the industrial estate administrator, and improves the overall quality that is due to proximity and close contact between firms. Firms, which move out of the incubator, appreciate to continuously use some of the services offered by the incubator, e.g. seminars and business networking events. | |
| Operation | It is difficult to define a very specific, narrow sectoral profile in advance. Incubators, which did so usually, had to redefine and widen their focus plus accepting non-high technology service providers. |
| Those incubators are most successful which work closely with higher education institutions. | |
| Incubators have to constantly upgrade the services they offer. Firms appreciate in particular services such as training, business networking, and financing. | |
| The more successful incubators have administrators, which spend the major part of their time directly communicating with tenant firms and taking care of the networks around the incubator. | |
| Successful incubators are profitable. At the same time, many incubators are not even earning their recurrent cost. This particularly refers to incubators in depressed regions. It is questionable whether incubators are the most appropriate and effective policy instrument for such regions. | |
| Assessment of Performance | Any assessment of the performance of an incubator has to address three different levels: |
| 1. Internal factors: Cost performance, utilization, tenant satisfaction | |
| 2. Direct effects: Total number of incubated firms and created jobs, survival rate, firms still located in proximity | |
| 3. Indirect effects: Contribution to structural change, overall entrepreneurial dynamism, business networking | |
Source: Maggi (2001)