Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Mature and Developing Economies: the Cases of the European Union and Iran

Incubators have gained wide reputation in most countries as efficient institutions contributing to regional development and economic growth. They assist their clients through their value-adding services and a wide range of support services and facilities that cannot be easily procured from other sources. The content of these services and the way they are supplied will have important effects on the success of the incubatees, and thereby, on the incubators performance. Introducing improved incubation models, informing incubators of their distance from acceptable performance norms and models, and disseminating incubators success stories among those involved in the industry will be tools that are expected to assist incubator managers to make more informed and enlightened decisions. The use of composite indicators is a simple method of comparing a wide variety of systems under evaluation such as countries and organizations dealing with a multitude of complicated and wide issues including environmental, economic, social, and technological. Normally, the main objective in defining composite indicators is to compare the performance of a group of subjects evaluated along a given dimension. These indicators can also function as useful tools in analyzing policies and in communication of information to the public. In this paper, first, a state-of-the-art account of constructing composite indicators will be presented and then a number of tentative composite indicators will be introduced. Special emphasis will be laid on key performance indicators used in ranking technology incubators with due regard to the Iranian business incubation environment. This study is the first of its kind and is expected to open new avenues to taking effective measures in improving business and technology incubation programs.