Technology business incubators in China and India: a comparative case study.

We present a comparative case study of Technology Business Incubators (TBIs) in two major emerging economies in Asia - China and India. We employ an integrative analytical framework that combines three broad categories of indicators (originally developed by developed by Mian, 1997): Management policies and practices; Services and their impacts; and Performance outcomes; with the national system of innovation (NSI) concept. At the micro (TBI) level, we mainly focus on: objectives, structure and governance of incubators, selection of tenants, funding for incubators and tenants, services provided by incubators, and performance outcomes. We attempt to identify similarities and differences between the two systems, explore the reasons for performance differences, and draw policy implications. Our study shows that the differences between the TBIs in China and India are mainly due the differences between the NSIs of China and India, as major components of NSI such as macroeconomic conditions, national S&T policy framework, industrial structure and the nature of financial institutions have played significant role in shaping the nature and rate of TBIs development in both countries. This suggests that building and strengthening the NSI is imperative to achieve positive and high outcomes in the growth and performance of TBIs; and specific and strong measures to develop TBIs alone may fail to produce desired outcomes, if the NSI is weak.