Corporate Accelerators As Recent Form Of Startup Engagement: The What, The Why, And The How

Abstract

An increasing number of established companies have recently started to launch corporate accelerator programs to engage with entrepreneurial startups, making this a worldwide, cross-industrial phenomenon. Nevertheless, there is a lack of understanding of the various objectives and approaches adopted by companies. This article examines 13 in-depth case studies of corporate accelerator programs and is the first to empirically derive and discuss a typology for corporate accelerators, assessing objectives and design configurations. Thereby, the article contributes to the emerging discussion about corporate accelerators in corporate entrepreneurship literature. Moreover, the findings provide corporate managers with an understanding of corporate accelerators and guidance for how to make design choices for startup engagement programs.

Accelerators as authentic training experiences for nascent entrepreneurs

“…(2) create income and wealth; (3) solve a social, business, or consumer problem; or (4) commercialize an innovation (Miller and Bound, 2011;Bliemel et al, 2016;Kanbach and Stubner, 2016).…”

Startup Engagement as Part of the Technology Strategy Planning – How Rheinmetall Automotive Increases Innovation by Using Corporate Venturing

“…However, one decade later things have completely changed and Open Innovation strategies-especially CV activities-have increasingly found their ways into business practice. Over the last few years, numerous established companies have launched programs for interacting with entrepreneurial startups and internalizing these external opportunities [7,8]. This is proven by e.g.…”

“…the Global Accelerator Learning Initiative (GALI) which listed 574 accelerators worldwide in February 2019 [9]. Kanbach and Stubner give a very good overview about the variety of this phenomenon and the lack of understanding of the various objectives and approaches adopted by companies [8,10].…”

“…In summary, literature review shows that CV is not uniform and diverse types and forms of CV exist, each of which follows different strategic dimensions. The research work of Kanbach and Stubner [8,10] explains very well how important the link between the definition of the objectives and the design configuration of the CV program are. This is an important success factor that we want to consider in our research work.…”

“…These CV activities should be embedded in the existing TDDP [2] at RHA and the recommendations will include strategic considerations corresponding to the objectives of RHA in view of CV. Defining clear objectives is very crucial success factor for CV [8] and will help RHA by designing its startup engagement.…”