On November 2 and 3, 2015, UBI Global and Ontario Centres of Excellence (OCE) co-hosted a benchmarking conference & award ceremony for the 2015 top performing university business incubators in North America. The event was held at Malaparte at TIFF Bell Lightbox, 350 King St W, Toronto, ON M5V 3X5, Canada.

The event highlighted best practices, hands-on-tools, analyses, success stories, and featured inspiring presentations that allowed those who attended to network, learn from each other and improve performance in order to enhance economic transformation and local, regional and national development.

It has been a very promising year for North American incubators, the third largest region UBI Global benchmarks in terms of sample size.

North American business incubators have attracted a total of $1.98b in investment, meaning each of the 60 incubators has received an average of $33m each. With regard to deal flow North America as a whole accept 9.2k applications per year, equating to an average of 154 applications per incubator.

In the last 5 years, North America’s business incubators have created 28.4k jobs (473 jobs per incubator) and over the same time period generated $5.3b in sales, equating to an average of $89m in sales per incubator.

During the event, UBI Global has announced and awarded ten Top University Business Incubators, five Top University Business Accelerators and two High Impact Incubation Programs in North America. These awardees are also shortlisted for the UBI Global’s World Rankings in London, United Kingdom on November 25, 2015.