Abstract:

The objective of the paper is to assess the operation of academic business incubators at technical universities in Poland and to identify their key success factors. The research was carried out in the period of October 2018 – February 2019 using the platform of interankiety.pl. The survey questionnaire was addressed to 209 representatives of the tenant companies which are currently using or used the services of academic business incubators run by public technical universities in Poland. The research indicates that the processes implemented by academic business incubators are assessed as good or sufficient, however, the key operations of incubators received the highest rating. What upsets is the lack of the systematic monitoring of the level of satisfaction of the needs of tenant companies and their performance by incubators. It is the key operation for the verification of the functioning of each organization, including business incubators. It has been found that there is no research into the efficiency of operations of business incubators created by universities. Most studies relate to the efficiency of a total number of business incubators, run by local governments as well as associations and foundations, which can be private or public-private. The paper also clearly indicates the key success factors of academic business incubators, which can be used to create new academic business incubators and improve the existing ones.