UBI Global, the Stockholm-based research and advisory firm known for its regional and global studies that map and evaluate the world of business incubation, will release its biyearly rankings at the World Incubation Summit 2018 in Toronto, Canada on February 22. This year’s event is co-hosted by the DMZ at Ryerson University, one of Canada’s leading incubation programs.

According to UBI Global, a top university-linked incubation program is a business incubator or accelerator connected to an institution of higher education that achieves outstanding impact and performance relative to its global peers. The program outperforms its global peers with regard to the value it provides to its innovation ecosystem and its client startups, as well as the attractiveness of the program itself.

ETC collaborates with many universities in Baltimore and is happy to announce we have been ranked #7 world wide for a Top Business Incubator Collaborating with University. Deb Tillett, the President of ETC, attended the program and accepted our award in Toronto last week.

“Following a rigorous data-driven approach, we assessed and benchmarked incubation programs across the world,” says Holger Meyer, Director of Research at UBI Global. ”Our biyearly world benchmark study visualizes the state of the international incubation ecosystem and illustrates key challenges and opportunities faced by the participating programs.”

The UBI Global World Benchmark Study 2017/2018 reveals that the participating incubation programs accepted over 10,000 new client startups in the year of 2016. Their current client and recent alumni startups have over 72,000 employees on the payroll today. Furthermore, over the past five years, these same ventures generated over $3.2billion in sales revenue and raised a combined total of over $4.7billion in funding.

UBI Global CEO and Co-founder, Ali Amin adds, “Our goal is to visualize the many great accomplishments achieved by the business incubation community. By highlighting the impact and performance of these programs, we are not only helping incubators and accelerators to become more efficient, but we are also assisting government officials in developing their respective innovation ecosystems. The benchmark and rankings also enable corporations to make informed partnership and investment decisions about the incubation programs and the startups they intend to engage with.”

This year the final participants were selected after assessing a total of 1370 programs, 259 of these programs, located in 53 countries, were retained for the benchmark. For the UBI World Rankings of University-linked Business Incubators & Accelerators 17/18, the following ranking categories have been set:

• World Top Business Incubator – Managed by University - business incubators in this subgroup are directly operated by one or more universities.
• World Top Business Incubator – Affiliated with University – business incubators in this subgroup are not directly operated by but formally affiliated with one or more partner universities based on a contractual agreement.
• World Top Business Incubator – Collaborating with University – business incubators in this subgroup have no formal affiliation, but closely collaborate with one or more partner universities, generally based on a memorandum of understanding.
• World Top Business Accelerator – Linked to University – business accelerators that are managed by, affiliated with, or collaborate with one or more universities are ranked together on the group level.

The complete rankings will be made available on February 23, 2018 on: http://ubi-global.com/rankings/

About UBI Global: UBI Global is a Swedish-based data and advisory firm specializing in mapping, highlighting, and connecting the world of business incubation. Through a network of more than 500 member organizations from over 70 countries globally, UBI Global provides matchmaking, ranking, benchmarking, and research services to corporations and business incubation programs.