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The purpose of this paper is to understand the existing incubation practices and to develop suggestions for other incubations programs’ practitioners, by developing a benchmark study of outstanding Taiwanese university-based incubators (UBIs).

This research result is based on the methodology for generating a benchmarking from six outstanding Taiwanese UBIs and for other business incubators around the world.

According to this research result, the authors propose eight key performance indicators (KPIs): three for setting up and operating UBIs and five for incubator functions and services. Among those eight KPIs, the average set-up cost is US$595,000; the average number of incubatees is 22; the length of tenancy is four years; and the growth in incubatees’ turnover is around 15 percent.

Even the samples were outstanding UBIs in Taiwan; for future research, this approach might be applied to a bigger number of incubation centers or UBIs.

Many countries or areas still lack experience in setting up and running business incubators; therefore, practical advices for the managers are crucial for the success of these business incubators, and this benchmarking methodology can be applicable in some of those cases.

The benchmarking methodology for setting up the values of each KPI and the evaluation approach.

This study investigates consumers' willingness to pay for product attributes of domestically grown fruit and vegetable products.

Conjoint Analysis and Random Utility Model

Our empirical results show that the willingness to pay for attributes of products are different within groups with different education levels. For respondents who had higher education level, the priority concern for purchasing fruits and vegetables was safety. However, for respondents who had lower education level, the priority of concern was freshness. Regarding environmental awareness, consumers with higher education levels preferred the reduction of pollution more than ecological balance. For intellectual culture, consumers of higher education preferred cultural specialty packaging / labeling, more than described endemic life. Consumers with a lower education preferred endemic life presentation.

This research provides important information regarding consumers’ preference for different attributes of locally grown vegetables and fruits. Using this information, marketing strategies and policy measures to support the consumption of locally grown fruits and vegetables are implemented.

The paper aims to review existing performance indicators in technology business incubators (TBIs) and propose some new indicators with a focus on incubation activities in higher educational institutes (HEIs) of India.

Performance indicators of various types of incubators were identified from research papers followed by interview, consultation and suggestion from experts of the subject. Nature of interrelationship between the identified indicators has been established with the help of Interpretive Structural Modelling methodology and Matrice d’impacts croisés multiplication appliquée á un classment analysis.

Number of ideas came for screening and number of ideas converted to start-ups, survival rate of incubatees is the indicators which have the highest driving power followed by time taken in screening an idea and number of failed or rejected ideas returned back into incubation. Few indicators (driving indicators) are affecting performance of other indicators as well.

Some performance indicators are proposed which can be used for measuring performance of technology incubators in India. The actual implications will be known when these findings are used to assess performance of some technology incubator. This also is the limitation of the study that some cases can be included to validate the findings of this research.

A total of 15 performance indicators for measuring performance of TBIs in Indian HEIs have been proposed. The proposed indicators will help incubator management to prioritize the efforts and resource allocation.

TBIs are looked upon as mechanism for promoting entrepreneurial culture in Indian HEIs. Their success is well linked to growth of society. This research will help technology incubators to identify the most important factors in incubation process. Performance improvement will directly affect society in whole. Culture of IEE (Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Employment ) can be achieved through technology incubators

Identification of new indicators for performance measurement of incubators in Indian HEIs is the novelty of this research. This has a lot of value due to multilevel hierarchy model.