New strategies to measure and strengthen the social role of business incubators: their application to a Spanish region

Business incubators can be defined as a service meant to promote entrepreneurship and firm creation, especially within sectors characterised by a high innovative content. The present paper takes as its starting point a review of previous studies dedicated to the profitability of investments in general, and particularly to that of business incubators, seeking to propose an own method which can make it possible to measure both the economic and the social profitability of business incubators. The subsequent application of this method to the incubators based in a specific Spanish region will lead to the conclusion that incubators are undoubtedly profitable, since society recovers 2.8 euros via taxes from each euro invested. Nevertheless, a number of lacks become visible amongst our findings which should definitely be corrected. Hence our decision to make a number of suggestions aimed at improving both the operation of business incubators and their economic and social profitability levels