Evaluation
Measuring your incubator’s success.
Do you practice as you preach?
Yes, this is a question we keep on asking (e.g. with marketing). We’re sure you are explaining to your teams that evaluation of their internal design and work processes, of their marketing, of their management, of their financial planning etc. is paramount for long-term survival and solid business performance, not to mention success!
So, hands up: who is properly evaluating the performance of their incubation programme, work and management approach, financial plans etc?
By evaluation we mean only to a low percentage the question about whether the start-ups liked it, or found it interesting. If start-ups were your benchmark for evaluating your business model, performance and vision, then they probably wouldn’t need your support. Naturally, start-ups would play a significant role in your evaluation, but rather in terms of evaluating them as clients, e.g. correspondence of applying teams to aspired / targeted teams, or drop-outs or success within the 3 years after completion of your programme.
In short, you need KPI, metrics, milestone – exactly what you keep advising your teams. You will need to reflect on a sound methodology to avoid whitewashing your own evaluation.
As you might have guessed, game incubation being still in its infancy, there is no study or guideline for how to evaluate a game incubator. However, you can draw inspiration from the below mentioned recommendations. For a list of KPI in table 3 of the publication Assessing business incubation: A review on benchmarking (see below).