Assessing the effectiveness of business incubators in fostering SMEs: evidence from China

Jin Hong and Jinfeng Lu

International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management, 2016, vol. 20, issue 1/2, 45-60

Abstract: The number of business incubators (BIs) in China has grown at an astonishing pace through the decades since their establishment. We investigated the effectiveness of China's business incubators as a government tool of cultivating small-medium sized enterprises (SMEs) by relating their service offerings to SMEs' performance. Using data on China's 120 state-level business incubators from 2008 to 2012 and data on the metropolises that host them, we find no evidence that infrastructure support contributes to intellectual property generation or venture capital acquisition. The results suggest a modest contribution of BIs' business assistance to SMEs' access to venture capital. Moreover, the findings confirm that professional technical assistance is valuable for SMEs' growth in the Chinese context. Additionally, we find that incubator's age and number of tenants are significantly positively correlated with the incubator firms' performance.

Keywords: business incubators; incubation services; incubation effectiveness; small and medium-sized enterprises; SMEs; firm performance; entrepreneurship; China; intellectual property; venture capital; professional assistance; technical assistance; incubator age; incubator tenant numbers. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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