Which firms benefit most from the incubators?

The incubatees are not homogeneous but they differ in age, size, industry, phase of development and firm strategy. Consequently, the technology incubators should segment the client firms in order to provide the right services for the right firms. In this paper, firstly, we investigate which are the firms that seem to benefit the most from the incubator. Secondly, we investigate if the firms that should benefit from the incubator are actually able to claim these benefits. Our findings suggest that the relatively young firms that have not extended their stay at the incubator for over two years benefit most from the incubator. The incubators should therefore impose strict graduation criterion at this two-year threshold. The innovative, internationally and growth-oriented firms are frequent users of the incubator services, even of the more specialised services. The incubators need to develop actively and improve the quality of these special services by, for example, networking with other incubators.