An Analysis of Administrative "Best Practices" in the Administration of Business Incubators

A large body of scholarly work has been published on “best practices” in the administration of business incubators. These strategies for the operation of the facilities outline ideal administrative policies and procedures that are not always practical for the operation of all business incubators. Using data acquired from a nationwide survey of business incubators this paper investigates the use of “best practices” identified by scholars in the management of operating business incubators. This research uses frequency analysis and cross tabulation to analyze the “best practices” variables of the survey. The analysis illustrates compliance and use of these “best practices is not uniform in the administration of business incubators. Compliance with these administrative “best practices” is selective. There are variances in the utilization of each of the policies and procedures set forth by “best practices” for administration of business incubators. These variances are reflected in not only practices of each incubator but there are also variances in compliance by size of the community.