Business incubators, performance and effectiveness: A systematic review

From their emergence in the 1950s to their popularization in the late 1990s, business incubators have promoted entrepreneurship and innovation worldwide. This article proposes a systematic review of the literature on the evaluation of their performance at the global level. We analyzed 75 articles from Scopus and Web of Science from 2015 to 2021. We identified seven types of evaluations: 1) process management, 2) end results, 3) benchmarking, 4) impact of external networks, 5) learning, and 6) incubate behavior. This study contributes with the identification of a significant change in methodology with a predominance of quantitative (44 occurrences) over qualitative (11 occurrences), and mixed (12 occurrences). In terms of theory, a great dispersion was found. Finally, a research agenda is proposed.