The University Business Incubator (UBI) Index, a Stockholm-Sweden produced report that names what it believes to be the 25 best programs in the world, has named Ryerson University’s Digital Media Zone (DMZ) as the fifth best.
TEC Edmonton, an incubator at the University of Alberta took the 10th place, while Western University’s Western Research Parks took 22nd place.
UBI Index calls itself a “thought leader in performance analysis of business incubators around the world,” helping business incubators become more efficient and competitive through a “comprehensive benchmark” where more than 300 incubators in over 60 countries participate. 
With an international research team, UBI Index claims it has “successfully built the most reliable Global Top 25 ranking of University Business Incubators in the world.”
Usually rankings like these aren’t quite objective in their proclamations, more based on popular opinion. Often they should be looked at as fun features that hint at which people or organizations are viewed to have been performing well at the time, like our “Biased List of the Top Five Coworking Spaces in Montreal“.
However with the UBI Index, it looks like the firm has put a great deal of effort into quantifying what makes an incubator “better” or “worse”. Particularly the organization said it measured over 60 KPI’s (key performance indicator), like jobs created, incubator revenue, paying customers of clients, sales, revenue per clients, partners and sponsors, survival rate, funding available, VC & angel funding received, active coaches & mentors, background of coaches & mentors, and more.
The study defined a university business incubator as one that is: Managed (by) or affiliated to university (-ies); the primary objective to facilitate entrepreneurship and support early stage (new) ventures through a systematic (mid-long term) and extensive incubation process that includes services and infrastructure; and includes quality controlled intake of clients (startups) and regular time bound exits in form of graduate startup clients.
Moreover, the study assessed 800 incubators around the world and actually “benchmarked” 300 of them.