Business incubators are a major tool in entrepreneurial eco-system of any country and forms the backbone of economic development initiatives. One of the greatest adaptations of business incubators came through universities especially public sector universities. This is due to the university's understood responsibility of supporting science and society development and ultimately providing all the new businesses' requirements in science and technology. Saudi Arabia has taken robust measures to develop and improve the local entrepreneurial eco-system by establishing and nurturing business incubators, especially university business incubators. In a small frame of time, Saudi business incubators have produced many innovate solutions for the technology, economic and social challenges. Due to multifaceted functionality and lack of standard evaluation criteria the business incubator performance became very important topic in Saudi Arabia. The purpose of this research is to develop critical success criteria for business incubators in Saudi Arabia. Survey methodology was employed to collect the data. Data were analyzed in many ways. Firstly, based on the survey results, list of success criteria for business incubators performance was presented. Secondly, descriptive analysis shows that top three critical factors include (a) coaching and mentoring hours, (b) number of services and supports offered; and (c) access to funds in terms of total attractive investment. While the least important factors considered were (a) affiliation with the university, (b) time limit to tenancy, and (c) numbers of IPOs launched. Thirdly, factor analysis summarizes all the critical success factors for university business incubators and culminates into five big factors, including (a) support services; (b) network support; (c) financial support; (d) economic development;(e) alumni success. Finally, cluster analysis shows there are two major cluster groups in the data: (a) 'employees' of the incubators and (b) 'incubatees'. This research provides guidelines and critical success criteria for business incubators operating in Saudi Arabia or elsewhere.

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This paper aims to present the strategic landscape for global financial institutions through a trend analysis for Interbrand's top 100 global brands. The study used longitudinal data of 20 years (2001 to 2020) from the top 100 global brands published by Interbrand annually. Analyses are based on Interbrand's brand equity ($ millions), annual brand ranking, and annual growth in brand equity using descriptive statistics. This research provides three significant findings. Firstly, it supports the country of origin's effect on top Financial Institutions. American financial institutions were always ahead of financial institutions from other countries. European banks have a relatively higher growth rate. Secondly, this research proposes three clusters of global financial institutions. Leaders include financial institutions that appeared in Interbrand's Global brand list for at least 15 years during 2001-2020 and having minimum brand equity of USD 8.0 billion in 2020. Challengers include financial institutions that appeared in Interbrand's global brand list for at least five years during 2001-2020; and having minimum brand equity of USD 7.0 billion in 2020. Extinct include financial institutions that appeared in Interbrand's global brand list at least once during 2001-2020 but not listed for the last eight years. Finally, this paper presents the effects of the global financial crisis ( 2008) and global pandemic (2020) on financial institutions. The global financial crisis (2008-9) deeply affected the global banking industry. Many banks were forced to close, and governments had to bail them out. The financial stocks were crushed, and many of them were slashed. The collapse of the US financial system caused many investors to lose their money. The brand equity of financial institutions has the most significant decline. While the global pandemic crisis (2019-20) completely halted the world's economy for many months, the bank's brand equity was not severely affected. Although in 2019-20, there was a decline in the growth rate of the financial sector's brand equity compared to all other sectors, the cumulative brand equity of the financial sector was constantly on the rise. These findings have implications for practitioners and academicians to understand better the underlying patterns and changes in top global financial institutions' brand equity and devise the appropriate strategies. In addition, the findings invite future research on probing the reasons behind the drastic changes in the brand equity of various global financial institutions in the last two decades.

This study aims to measure the entrepreneur's opinions towards their credit rating in Saudi Arabia. Credit rating plays a pivotal role in the financial market, especially its more significant impact on new startups from the micro and macro levels. On the other hand, the credit rating industry, in general, is in its infancy stage in the Saudi financial market. Therefore, a minor objective of this study is to present the problems and prospects of entrepreneurs towards their credit rating. The study has adopted the questionnaire from earlier research on credit rating. A sample of 210 respondents participated in this survey comprising entrepreneurs, business incubation managers, bankers, university professors, engineers, doctors, and other professionals. Descriptive statistics and Exploratory Factor Analyses were used to analyze the data. Findings show there are five essential factors affecting credit rating in Saudi Arabia, i.e., (1) Credibility, (2) Clarity, (3) Competence, (4) Communications, and (5) Customer Services. The research provides valuable insights into the credit rating business and recommends that CRAs in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere improve upon these five factors to strengthen their business.