Management Review

›› 2019, Vol. 31 ›› Issue (5): 100-108.

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A Comparative Study on the Incubation Performance of Different Generations of Incubator: Evidence of Guangdong

Xu Zhi, Huang Pan, Chen Chaoyue   

  1. School of Business Administration, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510521
  • Received:2017-11-24 Online:2019-05-28 Published:2019-05-31

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Abstract:

An important task for the development of China's incubators in the future is to promote the quality and efficiency. However, the prerequisite of quality and efficiency promotion is to discriminate whether different types of incubators achieve their value proposition and functional orientation. Thus, based on the differences between value proposition and functional orientation, this paper constructs a new theoretical framework and identifies four generations of technology business incubators, and then applies one-way ANOVA to perform comparative analysis between groups, as well as Tukey test to comparative analysis between each of two groups in order to investigate the differences between input-output and incubation performance of different generation incubators. Empirical results show that, although the service performance of high-generation incubators is better, their inputs are much higher than that of low-generation incubators. From an input-output point of view, high-generation incubators do not necessarily outperform low-generation incubators. Considering their different service objects, the improvement of Chinese incubators is not only to blindly encourage the incubators' evolution from low generation to high generation. More importantly, the focus should be put on helping each generation of incubator fully achieve their main incubation function. Especially in China where development environment is regionally underbalanced, each generation of incubator has the necessity and rationality of existence. These findings provide some managerial implications regarding to differentiation performance evaluation, promotion of service capabilities and brand management of incubators.

Key words: technology business incubator, intergenerational evolution, incubation performance, Tukey test