Developing an intellectual capital benchmarking approach of business incubators

Purpose This study aims to propose an improved benchmarking approach for developing novel intellectual capital (IC) performance indicators (PIs) for business incubators (BIs), a crucial underexplored actor within entrepreneurial ecosystems. The developed PIs are used to benchmark the performance of the selected BIs, identify best-in-class performers and extract their practices into explicit knowledge to provide practical guidelines. Design/methodology/approach To create a more effective and practical benchmarking approach, this study integrates several validated methods, including the Delphi technique, business incubation maturity model, analytic hierarchy process knowledge mapping and ontology. These methods address the fundamental limitations of traditional benchmarking approaches and improve the overall process. Findings Through the implementation of the improved benchmarking approach, new IC indicators of BIs and their corresponding assessment rubrics, based on the maturity levels of business incubation, have been developed. Furthermore, the best performers for all IC indicators were identified, and their selected practices were extracted and presented as explicit knowledge. Originality/value This study addresses several major gaps in the literature, including (1) resolving fundamental limitations of traditional benchmarking approaches, (2) developing a new standard set of IC indicators and corresponding assessment rubrics for BIs, (3) conducting the first benchmarking of IC performance among BIs and (4) executing the IC benchmarking process through to the analysis phase.