Theoretical Framework

The theoretical framework was developed around three thematic axes: business incubation, incubators success factors and their impact in society. It also reduces the knowledge gap regarding business incubation insights.

Business Incubation Definition

According to several authors, there is no consensus in the definition of business incubation, thus, a unique definition of this concept is not existent (^{Cornelius & Bhabra, 2003}; ^{Theodorakopoulos, Kakabadse, & McGowan, 2014}). Authors like Theodorakopoulos, Kakabadse, and McGowan (2014) provide 12 definitions, while ^{Hackett and Dilts (2004)} present 22. The list of references of this document includes different authors who had given multiple definitions on this phenomenon. Beyond the interest of developing theoretical aspects around incubators, such as definitions, it has been relevant to acknowledge the configuration of incubators through the study of relevant factors.

Authors such as ^{Cornelius and Bhabra (2003)} discuss the difficulty for researches to obtain data from the incubators due to the lack of the standardization of the concept itself. In fact, ^{Hackett and Davis (2004)} mention an example of this problem with the so-called virtual incubators, whose concept is unclear, since its management can easily be confused with similar services.

From the literature, a business incubator definition can be built using the concepts already given by some recognized authors. A useful definition considering the ideas by many of these authors is the following:

The concept of business incubation is linked to the existence of an organization that gives an especially innovative environmental design through instruments, resources, services and cooperation networks. It organizes and orchestrates the existing forces contemplating market flows to support the generation of new businesses in a way that the systematized process is accelerated for the creation, growth and consolidation of incipient businesses. It takes as starting point the capacities of citizens who work as entrepreneurs with ideas born from varied sources as university experiences can be.

Success Factors in Business Incubators

Different authors have identified the relevant elements for the existence of an incubator (^{Somsuk & Laosirihongtong, 2014}). ^{Peña-Vinces, Brabo, Alvarez, and Pineda (2011)} mention seven survival pillars or key criteria for business incubators: management, finance, administrative management, infrastructure, incubation model, networking, incubator performance, and human talent management.

^{Hackett and Dilts (2004)} state that the success of an incubator is mostly related to the presence or absence of coaching and the access to the work network that provides proactive feedback to the incubators. Even though there is a lot of information related to incubators, no consensus in its success factors has been achieved (^{Theodorakopoulos et al., 2014}). Authors like ^{Lee and Osteryoung (2004)} have developed studies that compare critical factors of success (cFs) for American and Korean incubators, identifying broad similarities, except clarity and degree of concreteness.

^{Buys and Mbewana (2007)} identified 39 reported factors in literature and consolidated them in 11 constructs as independent variables of analysis: (i) access to science and technology expertise and facilities, (ii) comprehensive business plan, (iii) stringent selection criteria, (iv) availability of funding, (v) quality of entrepreneurs, (vi) stakeholder support, (vii) supportive government policies, (viii) competent and motivated management, (ix) financial sustainability, (x) experienced advisory board, and (xi) networking.

Wiggens and Gibson (2003) indicate that there are five aspects incubators must do well: (i) establish clear metrics of success, (ii) provide entrepreneurial leadership, (iii) deliver value-added services, (iv) develop new company processes, and (v) give access to human and financial resources.

On the other hand, ^{Hamdani (2006)} mentions eleven main characteristics of business incubators: (i) definition and scope, (ii) governance structure of sponsor, (iii) services provided, (iv) sources of funding, (v) incubation period, (vi) entry criteria, (vii) graduation criteria, (viii) objectives, (ix) industry sector, (x) inputs, and (xi) success indicator.

Several authors refer to the success factors, relevant characteristics and best practices (^{Bergek & Norman, 2008}; ^{Lalkaka, 2001}) of an incubator, although there is a lack for a standardized vision. Therefore, as part of the research methodology validation of this article, a chart relating study variables with recognized potential success factors of business incubators is generated.

Incubators Impact

Business incubators, as sources of innovation and technological transfer (^{Astebro, Bazzasian, & Serguey, 2012}), are promotors of economic prosperity (Markman, Phan, Balkin, & Gianodis, 2015) at a national and international level (Ca-rayannis & von Zedwitz, 2005).

Arts, Matthyssens, and Vandenbempt (2007) see incubation as an instrument to promote innovation and reduce the failure of new businesses. As indicated by these authors, the mortality rate of incubated businesses is less than the rate of not incubated new businesses. For that reason, governments have interests in generating a supportive environment for the creation of new companies (^{Chandra, 2007}), followed by entities that provide financial support from banks and private institutions (^{Aerts, Mahhtyssens, & Vandebempt, 2007}).

Peña et al. (2011) comment on the capacity of incubation models to generate wealth when an initial economic aid is present. These authors also indicate, as a relevant piece of data for the Colombian case, that 22 business incubators linked to the national project SENA provides support to incubators of technological bases "which generated 1,871 jobs and a value in sales of 21,514 million Colombian pesos" (own translation).

At the university sector, the topic of business incubation is well-known for promoting research and development (^{Barro, 2015}; ^{Yasuf & Nabeshima, 2007}). However, it is not always implemented due to several reasons, such as the existence of well-timed resources (M^{aital, Ravid, Ses-hadri, & Dumanis, 2008}; ^{Ortin, 2007}), wealth availability (^{Monge, Briones, & Garcia, 2012}), variation in incubation programs (^{Schillaci, Romano, & Longo, 2011}), reluctance to new models (^{Muscio, 2010}; ^{Valera, 2005}), market and cultural factors linked to the entrepreneur (Maital et al., 2008), among other aspects that generate influence in university-linked incubators (^{Breznitz & Feldman, 2010}). Besides, it is known that the promotion of university policies is not the only necessary measure, but their effective well-timed implementation is also required (^{Stradi, 2016}).

Theory shows that business success probabilities are higher with adequate companionship (^{Voisey, Gronall, Jones, & Thomas, 2006}). As a result, the existence of business incubators is important, and this study contributes as a starting point for the creation of business incubators at universities, both at face-to-face and distance education models.

Closing the Theoretical Gap

After reviewing studies on business incubators in Costa Rica, this study identified that some research has been carried out focusing on how entrepreneurs have developed their businesses. Adding to this topic, this research focuses on identifying incubators success factors and the techniques and procedures required to create new enterprises.

According to Hacket and Dilts (2004), the national research production of knowledge in business incubation can be found in the first two steps presented in figure 1, which presents a range of five research streams developed for the comprehension of the business incubation topic. This figure also shows that the theoretical gap is wider in the lower levels.

Source: Own elaboration with a base of information from ^{Hackett and Dilts, 2004}.

Figure 1 Research lines in business incubation and its relationship with existing literature.  

Beyond that vision, the generation of new entrepreneur-ships can be studied from the perspective of an incubator's scope; a subject in which this research intends to generate new knowledge. In this context, the relevance of this study becomes clear, since it pretends to approach innovative, updated and superior order knowledge (stream E, figure 1) by modeling characteristics, factors, and other elements of the studied ecosystem.

Constituent aspects

The oldest incubator is the ITCR incubator, followed by UNA and UCR. There are 18 years between the first and the last. These organizational units emerged as a project, and then they evolved in different ways depending on each university.

In the case of CIE-TEC, this center started as a proposal and then consolidated itself as a project of an academic unit (ITCR). UNA-INCUBA arose as a project (UNA, 2012) attached to the university director office and recently moved to the Office of Knowledge Transfer and External Linkages (OTVE-UNA, in Spanish). AUGE Agency started with the support of a twenty-pioneer team that turned into a department currently attached to the Vice-rectory of Research (UCR, 2012; UCR, 2015).

All the incubators assist potential entrepreneurs coming from the universities or from the community. Two incubators (ITCR and UNA) support entrepreneurs who work either individually or in groups while UCR considers only research teams.

It is relevant to point out that the incubators were formally constituted with their respective scope (^{Carayannis & von Zedwitz, 2005}), objectives (^{Chandra, 2007}), goals (^{Aerts et al,, 2007}), and policies (^{Hackett & Dilts, 2004}).

Directive Profile

The incubator direction or coordination is assigned to engineering professionals in two of the cases and to a planning professional in the other. In one of the incubators, the person who coordinated the incubator for several years was substituted by a professional with an entrepreneurial profile who holds a licentiate degree and counts on four years of experience (ITCR). In the other two cases, the professionals in charge of the incubator hold at least a master's degree, more than ten years of experience, and training in innovation management.

The incubator ran by the most experienced professional is that with more resources obtained from the Development Bank System -Sistema de Banca para el Desarrollo, SBD in Spanish- (CEBD, 2017). This incubator is recognized as a successful incubator and has supported 27 companies and generated over $ 4.9 million dollars in sales (^{Avila, 2018}; ^{Jiménez, 2013}). A critical success factor associated with these results may be due to a more experienced professional profile at the management level, which is a relevant variable to consider according to authors such as ^{Buys and Mbewana (2007)}, ^{Yong and Mooweon (2006)}, and M^{aital, Ravid, Seshadri, and Dumanis (2008)}.

Organizational Model

Related to the organizational structure, the oldest incubator was created with a traditionalist vision linked to the school of business administration. As for the other two incubators, they belong to an area that reports directly to the Rector's office.

The incubator having more human resources has been labeled as Direction, while the other two have been labeled as project/program; one of this has its own Center of business incubation (ITCR).

The work of leading the incubator is complemented with the use of permanent advisory committees formed by people with a recognized track record in the academic area or in the business sector. The committees give management support to the incubator director/coordinator in topics ranging from entrepreneurship management to analysis of projects and budgets. The idea is to carry out joint management for decision making.

The entrepreneurs training process differs. The oldest incubator uses its own methodology and the other two incubators use the well-known Lean Startup methodology that concludes with a viable product or MPV (^{Ries, 2011}); none of them has a certified ISO quality system.

The entrepreneurs training is given in the incubators through a specialized methodology. In the case of UNA, this organization also has an institutional program to promote entrepreneurship, which has courses available not only for students but also for external people (open model).

The processes of business incubators are grouped in stages: two of them (ITCR and UNA) group them in a traditional way (pre-incubation, incubation and post-incubation), while the other incubator (UCR) groups them in colored phases which reflect the state of progress in the incubation process (blue, yellow, green and red). Only the UCR does an acceleration process.

The cross-cutting axes of business management were identified for the three incubators and they were related to the projection of each university: science and technology for ITCR; the triple helix of innovation, social and environmental commitment for UNA; and excellence, innovation, technology and teamwork for the UCR.

At a modern level, business incubators make a transversal function through the organization. The methodology and types of services given by the incubator are relevant topics for several authors who point out the importance of the incubation model (Peña et al., 2011), support services (^{Adesic & Slavec, 2012}; ^{Hamdani, 2006}) and the components included in the incubation phases (^{Hackett & Dilts, 2004}).

Management Strategies

In the study, one of the incubators was experiencing a redefinition process. The information on the redesign and consequently its new strategies were indeterminate. Concerning the other two incubators, they show a differentiating management strategy that is having a community of mentors and experts able to train potential entrepreneurs according to a well-known incubation model (UCR). They also have a strong filtering process of projects as part of the entrepreneurs training process of the Entrepreneurship Program (UNA: Programa de Emprendimiento) from which national and international projects with social and environmental projection have been obtained.

Having expert advisors in different topics (^{Hamdani, 2006}) is one critical success factor pointed out by incubator managers. Also, for one of the incubators, having an official institutional budget is a success factor. It is widely known that one of the major limitations of entrepreneurship is the lack of financial resources from both public and private entities (^{Ortin, Salas, Trujillo, & Vendrell, 2007}). In this sense, this article is aimed to know the structural dimensions of natural incubators and their main components rather than to deepen into their evaluative elements. Therefore, incubators' efficiency is measured mainly through the progress of the incubated projects and their success level. That provides useful information to be taken as indicators.

According to ^{Voisey, Gornall, Jones, and Thomas (2006)} and Hamdani (2016), the performance and impact of the incubators are important measuring variables. In the studied cases, they were measured by using a series of predesigned parameters such as contribution to innovation (M^{aital et al., 2008}), technology transfer, faster learning (^{Hackett & Dilts, 2004}), preservation of the environment and national or international achievements of incubated projects. In a complementary way, it was determined that the youngest incubator participates in external performance evaluations with a Sweden organization.

Operational Resources

After studying the location of incubators and their human resources, it was found that one incubator has only two employees, and that incubator with more personnel -which also happens to be the last to be established (2012)- had six employees in 2015. Until the date of the interview, the facilities occupied by incubators were owned (1) and rented (2).

The universities provide partial and temporary human support from personnel who work in other departments so that entrepreneurs can use the general services platform or receive more specialized cooperation (such as labs and research centers). Nonetheless, the restriction of human and economic resources limits the incubator's projection. This fact is evident when comparing with a recently created international incubator.

In Costa Rica, none of the incubators (public and private) receive funding from current transfers by the Central Government; a situation that differs from other countries, like Mexico and Spain (^{Stradi, 2016}). As an example, the National Institute for Entrepreneurship (Instituto Nacional de Emprendedores) of Mexico finances local incubators as a strategy to generate new taxpayers (Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey, 2015). In Spain, the government allocates public funding as an incentive for innovation (^{Vila, Ferro, & Guisado, 2010}).

In countries like Chile, the University of Valparaiso business incubator, named Chrysalis, was constituted in 2010. At the time of the study they had 20 employees, most of them professionals (^{Stradi, 2016}), and had been recognized as an international incubator model for various years. This incubator administrates and invests funds as seed capital for over of $ 2.3 million dollars and has supported 70 new businesses (PUCV, 2017).

Considering that national incubators finance has similar elements, figure 2 summarizes information about possible sources of funding. This figure shows that one potential source of financing is the SBD, created in 2008 through Law 8634 (Gobierno de la República de Costa Rica, 2008) in order to promote productive development with financial support to new business ideas. Every year, the government appeals for a competition where high-ranked projects receive the opportunity to develop their business idea and receive nonrefundable funds as seed capital.

Source: own elaboration.

Figure 2 Sources of operational resources for public universities incubators in Costa Rica. 

The resources received by incubators come from financial support or subsidies in kind. They can be given by the university, the foundation of the university, financial entities, sales services, and temporary sponsorships. As main source of funds, one strength of the UNA-INCUBA is formalized financing as part of its budget. Regarding sales services, AUGE is the only incubator that receives funding from dealing its ventures within the university campus (called hangars).

Funding administration for incubation initiatives can also be achieved through the university foundations, even though they are not part of the university structure. University foundations contribute to streamline the use and allocation of resources towards business incubation projects. In this study, the university foundations analyzed were FUNDATEC, FUNDEVI and FUNDA-UNA.

The incubators under study are part of the cost structure of the university they belong to, therefore, the access to funds (M^{aital et al., 2008}), working capital (^{Buys & Mbewana, 2007}; ^{Hamdani, 2006}), and support systems (Hacket & Dilts, 2004) are vital aspects for their subsistence provided by these institutions.

Strategic Alliances

The development of the legal framework on entrepreneur-ship and business incubation in the country dates back to 1990. Existing laws, policies, plans and decrees have formed a legal framework that seeks to promote entrepreneurship. Nowadays, all the incubators are part of the national net RNIA from which cooperation actions are derived, and coordination actions with other public and private organizations of the country are carried out. As ^{Kantis (2017)} indicates, the importance of an incubator is that of contributing to "accomplish the development of an extensive offer of financing that covers different parts of the investment and profiles of demanding businesses" (own translation).

Because of the enactment of the Scientific and Technological Development Law 7169 (Ley de Desarrollo Científico y Tecnológico), university incubators were created in 1994, 2011 and 2012. Furthermore, a very important university alliance consolidated between the Comission of National Council of Rectors (Consejo Nacional de Rectores, CONARE) and NEXO, which was born as an answer to the same law (^{Alfaro, 2016}). The GEM Report, gives a view of the entre-preneurship situation in Costa Rica (^{Lebendiker, Herrera & Velásquez, 2014}).

Authors such as Theodorakopoulus et al. (2014) and Carayanis and von Zedwitz (2005), among others, have pointed out networking benefits as a development element for incubators and ventures. The benefits of having an incubator network are known and can be described as follow: knowledge of external financing options for entrepreneurs, managers professional updating, experiences exchange, economical support for events and projects, counselling from national and international experts, contact maintenance and management, training management, and dissemination of initiatives results.

Project Management

All the incubators are focused on assisting timely innovative entrepreneurships that collaborate with the university mission and they are not an alternative of subsistence for the entrepreneur (^{Nelson, 2015}). However, in other Latin American countries, subsistence entrepreneurship is linked to universities in order to generate employment in regions with socio-economic difficulties. Examples of these universities are Autónoma del Estado de ^{Hidalgo in Mexico (Hidalgo, 2015)} and the University of Valparaiso in Chile (^{Gotschlich, 2015}).

The three Costa Rican national universities develop entrepreneurship fairs where the interested population present projects that are graded according to applied criteria. The incubator receives several projects per year. Depending on the incubator, indoor incubation registers a maximum of three and a minimum of one reception yearly. All the projects that get into the incubation stage enter a project portfolio and must exceed the pre-incubation stages.

For the proper administration of projects, authors such as ^{Buys and Mbewana (2007)} and ^{Aerts et al. (2007)} point out the importance of having qualified entrepreneurs and considering the personal factors of them (^{Romo, Quevedo & Herrera, 2013}). From this perspective, it was found that in two of the incubators the common feature of successful projects is the existence of technical capacity prior to the execution of the project; this is the base for the development of a good product or service. For the other incubator (UNA-INCUBA), the most relevant feature is having the adequate filters for projects and entrepreneurs.

The use of selection process and the criteria to measure incubation initiatives are described in the literature by authors such as Hacket and Dilts (2004), ^{Voisey et al. (2006)}, and ^{Buys and Mbewana (2007)}. One of the tools used as selection criteria to choose the beneficiaries (projects) is the evaluation matrix, which is used by one of the incubators (UNA-INCUBA). Having projects with some characteristics like clarity, innovation, multifacetedness, multidisciplinarity, dynamism, environmental sustainability, and technology base are other criteria considered by incubators.

When evaluating individual or group entrepreneurs, incubators review that they have an excellent business project (that can lead to salable products, not only to research outputs), the previous knowledge about the business core, the disposition of entrepreneurs to learn new techniques and to be open-minded for the development of new skills to let grow soft abilities along the incubation process.

The training period for entrepreneurs in each incubator varies from two to six months. External organizational units that are part of the university provide support and counselling to potential entrepreneurs through entrepreneurship programs like Programa de Emprendedores (ITCR and UNA), Programa Proinnova and Red Emprende (UCR). In addition, university research centers support entrepreneurs.

The projects orientation is not restricted to a single topic, and it is related to each university distinctive seal. The ITCR incubator promotes the development of projects related to applied science and technologies. The ucr incubator uses knowledge intensively. UNA'S directs its focus on the practical application of knowledge and its triple action axis: economic, social and environmental.

Some successful projects of the national incubators are the following: (i) Siwa: microfiltered natural juices; (ii) Reutipiña: obtaining the enzyme bromelain for pharmacological use; and (iii) Pet-life: premium nutritional supplement for pets. All the incubators have examples of successful cases on their website.

Two of the incubators submit their projects for evaluation to obtain funds from the SBD. When the entrepreneurs received the funds from the SBD, from the total amount, the incubator charges a percentage that is then reinvested in the same incubation system. The percentages go from 20 (ITCR) to 5 % (UNA). The payment of this percentage is a discrete event that occurs when the project enters the university incubator process, only in that moment and at once.

Student Relationship

Student relationship includes the aspects related to the profile of the entrepreneurs and the university promotion of the new businesses (La Nación, 2014). The average age of entrepreneurs is between 28 and 35 years. Most of them are graduated students (ITCR and UCR) or students (UNA). At ITCR and UCR most of the entrepreneurs are male while at UNA most are female.

Two incubators (UNA and UCR) reported an entrepreneur competency profile that includes aptitudes such as creativity, flexibility, assertiveness, work passion, and mainly leadership. Those agree with the ones described by authors like ^{Ugalde-Blinda, Balbastre-Benavent, Canet-Giner, & Escribá-Carda (2014)}.

The motivation of some potential entrepreneurs lies in the desire to satisfy the need of accomplishment and personal growth by creating their own business. A study by ^{Stradi (2016)} shows that some of the obstacles interviewed students face are: entrepreneur individualism, development of competencies in the pre-incubation process, and lack of seed capital. The university strengths they visualize are: academic excellence, practical application of knowledge, available specialized infrastructure, and the counsellors and professors' highly specialized expertise. These aspects can be projected towards their specific incubator processes too. This university level promotes entrepreneurship through an entrepreneurial program especially if something similar does not exist in the faculties/majors. Consequently, it is essential to promote entrepreneurship in the student's mind and to create a relationship tied to the university (Hacket and Dilts, 2004; ^{Hamdani, 2006}; ^{Morales, Pineda & Avila, 2012}; ^{Rikap, 2012}).

International Business Incubators Experiences

This section was aimed to model the system of the national incubators studied and to complement this information with relevant aspects from other successful university business incubators (^{Versino, 2000}). The original purpose of the study was not to study the comparative characteristics of the five incubators, but to reinforce important concepts based on international experiences.

Making a 1-1 comparison with these foreign universities was unnecessary since the scope of the research objective of the study was local and the socioeconomic realities of countries differ in various aspects, such as geography, distances, country development, socio-economic and educational profile, subsidized budgets, among others.

The two business incubators interviewed belong to prestigious universities and their analysis is based on the answers provided in the questionnaire. The incubators were the High Technology Business Incubator of the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Hidalgo, Mexico, and the Business Incubator of the Pontificia Universidad Católica in Valparaíso, Chile. The areas of study for these incubators were divided into topics: generalities, incubator type, project management, entrepreneurships, and regionalization. The elements of each topic are similar to those studied with national business incubators; however, in this case, they are concentrated in five relevant topics with 25 items of analysis.

In addition, the research includes an area of study related to regionalization, since studying how these incubators having different assistance centers in the country manage the entrepreneurs' learning strategy was necessary to consider options for the distance education processes. Besides, the national business incubators studied did not have distance education processes in this area. Consequently, including international experience in the study is relevant.

The analysis reveals that both incubators have a significant historical record. They have been funded by both the central government and private entities. They receive mainly external entrepreneurs and are consolidated organizations with multiple projects administered by specialized professional personnel. A difference with the national incubators is that these incubators do receive funding which has an effect in their capacities of accomplishment.

The Mexican incubator works with a limited focus on technological base enterprises (EBT businesses). It runs a network of business incubators, and for distance training of human resource they use virtual communication tools complemented with the predominant face-to-face system of the university. This type of model can be used by distance education systems to provide methodologies of business incubation.

The Chilean university incubator focus on the creation and development of start-ups, spin-off and EBTS and has locations in two cities and links with technology, innovation and business centers. Despite being recently created, the Chilean university incubator has a significant amount of personnel and its management has been recognized internationally due to important results related to the level of creation of start-ups and wealth generation.

The Chilean government has given much support to the issue of creating new enterprises and created CORFO Project (VERDE,2016) that is an iniatiative which promotes startups in the country.

According to international experiences, the measurement of the effectiveness and impact of the incubator's performance can be evaluated with international indexes. Getting good results in these evaluations facilitates obtaining capital resources for the incubator. An example is Chrysalis incubator in Chile, which received the Top Challenger of Latin America recognition from UBI World Benchmark Study 2017-2018 (PUCV, 2018). This shows that universities are ready to break the paradigm to venture into the development of new businesses through their organizational units. In addition, the methodology used by the Chilean incubator is internationally well-known. As ^{Ries (2011)} describes, Lean Startup "is a group of practices which help entrepreneurs increase the probabilities of creating a start-up with success" (p. 64, own translation).

Chilean incubators key success factor is having a good business idea and entrepreneurial quality projects. On the other hand, the Mexican incubator, which uses its own methodology, emphasizes the entrepreneur's training, qualified counselling availability and project monitoring. Multiple studies, as that developed by ^{Romo, Quevedo, and Herrera (2013)}, address the efforts made by some Mexican universities in relation to the entrepreneurship programs and their relationship with the students.

Regarding the mechanisms to increase self-employment, the Chilean incubator admits opportunity entrepreneur-ships, and the Mexican incubator accepts subsistence entrepreneurships. The biggest obstacle for the entrepreneurs in Mexico is to find financing, the same problem detected in the national incubators studied. However, for the Chilean incubator the main problem is the management of supply-demand affairs and liquidity.

Incubators managers recommend the following tip to any new incubator: standardize the entrepreneurs assertively through a robust business incubation program that allows the students to develop the necessary competencies according to the university own academic seal to take advantage of the capacities developed and the competitive advantages of each university.

Directive and Academic Implications

Results provide systemized and detailed first-hand information about the functions of public universities business incubators. Substantial differences in the focus of each incubator can be recognized; those are associated to the way in which the accomplishment of each university mission is presented. This aspect must be considered by any other entity planning to develop the identity of its own business incubator in the future.

The results from the three models provide an idea on how university entrepreneurism is being handled in public universities in this country, making use of the existing university policies and resources such as the mentors' scientific knowledge and specialized university areas.

At the managerial level, public universities authorities must formulate specific business incubation policies that can result in effective action strategies in short and medium terms. Another important finding is that the patriarchal vision in Costa Rica falsely finds those activities to promote entrepreneurship against the university social function. Consequently, puts the sources of funding at risk. Therefore, the first step to strengthen business incubators is to get a real institutional commitment that will lead to operational resources for the incubators; on the contrary, there is a lack of a real commitment.

Limitations and Future Research Lines

The study developed considers a greater scientific relevance taking into consideration that in our country the studies developed are mostly on the topic of specific cases such as spin-off affairs.

International entities/institutes have generated efficiency metrics to assess the predefined parameters for a business incubator. Nonetheless, the results of these studies are not public and tend to have a significant cost. This study gives the researcher the possibility to undertake parallel studies to make the knowledge found public and, consequently, contribute to provide the equity in access of highly innovative information in higher education.

In subsequent studies, researchers can use these results as a starting point to develop indicators, considering that this research has contributed to determine analysis categories and 81 elements that can be used as an input to build new questionnaires based on semi-quantitative o quantitative methodologies. For instance, in the external evaluation of an incubator efficiency, a rubric on the vision of several authors about measuring important categories and elements can be implemented.

The information hereby presented could be complemented with other studies in order to establish a measurement method that can be used to obtain a diagnosis of a group of incubators and monitor their progress.