Author: Tom O’Neal
Publisher: Forbes
Date: July 8, 2014
All due respect to Forbes contributor Cliff Oxford and his Oxford Center for Entrepreneurs, but his post titled “Trouble in Paradise: Why Business Incubators Don’t Work” shows a glaring lack of understanding about how incubation works.
I lead a team that runs what has been named the best incubator network in the country … the University of Central Florida Business Incubation Program that boasts eight incubators in communities surrounding Metro Orlando along Florida’s High Tech Corridor.
My research team just finished a study of 224 university incubator clients matched up over time with 224 non-incubator companies in the same industry sector, started at the same time, in the same geographical area. As the graph shows, the university incubator firms did better when it came to employee growth while in the program and continued to grow at a higher rate after graduating from the program. Read more here.
