Based in Stockholm, Sweden, UBI Global is a thought leader in performance assessment of business incubators around the world where more than 400 business incubators and accelerators in over 70 countries participate. Through their international benchmark, UBI Global helps business incubators and accelerators become more efficient and competitive.
For 2015, UBI benchmarked “Social Innovation” programs in the USA. Fledge was one of the best, if not the best. Overall, Fledge scored 75, vs. the total average of 37, and the top 10% averaging 68.
That high score comes from our exceptional value for clients. On that sub-category Fledge scored 85, vs. the average of 32, and the top 10% average of 68.
Digging deeper, the first key component of that value comes from training. Unlike most programs, Fledge does not just bring in a few guest speakers, nor do we leave it up to the mentors to teach our participants what they need. Instead, Fledge includes a class on entrepreneurship, ensuring every participant at least walks away knowing the whole gamut of skills needed to be a successful entrepreneur, if not working on those skills during the program.
Fledge then focuses specifically on the skill of “story telling“, which when combined with the knowledge of business planning, results in our graduates accessing the funding they need to launch and grow.
Then finally, Fledge’s own for-profit business model ensures we have an incentive to continue helping out graduates beyond the few intense weeks we spent together. The weeks within the program are just the start of a network of support that continues to provide help in the many years it takes to build a successful business.
Our participants all know of this value, but a 30 second video snippet does not convey the value of Fledge as well as this benchmark. Thank you UBI for sharing.
[UPDATE: October 8, 2015. At SOCAP15, UBI and Cisco honored Fledge as one of the best three accelerators in North America. We are excited to receive such recognition for our program.]