Youngstown tops affiliates ranking

Youngstown Business Incubator has been named the number one university-affiliated incubator in the world by University Business Incubator (UBI) Index. The incubator is associated with a range of universities, namely Kent State University, Akron University, Hiram College, Youngstown State University and Case Western Reserve University. 

H-Farm Ventures, affiliated with Ca’ Foscari University of Venice took second place, while TechColumbus secured third place. TechColumbus is associated with Ohio State University, Columbus State Community College, Otterbein University and Denison University.

Montpellier Agglomeration Business and Innovation Centre, affiliated with Montpellier University, took fourth place, and fifth place went to Hub China, affiliated with Capital Normal University, Beijing Technology and Business University and North China University of Technology. Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator, associated with University of Southern California; University of California, Los Angeles, California Institute of Technology and California State University, Northridge, can be found in sixth place. The Swedish Stiftelsen Chalmers Innovation, affiliated with Chalmers University of Technology is in seventh place.

Nearer the bottom, we find the Nanotechnology Incubator of the State of Nuevo León, associated with Instituto de Innovación y Transferencia de Tecnología de Nuevo León, in eigth place, and 1871 in ninth place. 1871 has Northwestern University, Chicago University, Illinois Institute of Technology, Illinois University and DePaul University as partners. Finally, Italy’s Nuvolab takes tenth place. The incubator counts both Universita’ Cattolica del Sacro Cuore and Scuola Superiore Sant’anna as partners.

The index ranks university affiliated incubators based on three key factors, seven sub categories and more than 60 key performance indicators. The three key factors are the value for the ecosystem (that is economic impact generated by the startups), the value for the client (that is the startups) and attractiveness (that is the success of startups post-graduation). The latest ranking differs from UBI’s main index, published earlier in the year, which examines officially backed university incubators.

Dhruv Bhatli, director of research and product development at UBI Index, said: “The companies at Youngstown Business Incubator have created a high number of jobs, they have high sales revenue and they have an exceptionally high proportion of former clients that have been growing and have been profitable. Some of the success stories at Youngstown Business Incubator are Turning Technologies, Factset Revere, Sequentia and The Learning Egg.”