Exploring the benefits of corporate accelerators: investigating the SAP Industry 4.0 Startup Program

Abstract

Corporate accelerators are on the rise and established companies from a diverse set of industries and regions have set up such startup support programs to predominantly pursue strategic goals. The purpose of this study is to shed light on the benefits of corporate accelerators from a corporate perspective and that of the participating startups. In order to do so, this in-depth single-site case study investigates the SAP Industry 4.0 Startup Program building upon an inductive research design with explorative nature. The authors qualitatively examine a newly established corporate accelerator program of one of the world’s largest enterprise software companies and provide valuable insights for both practitioners and scholars engaged in corporate accelerators. The benefits for startups participating in corporate accelerator programs can be linked to operational go-to-market acceleration in regards to product development, sales acceleration, as well as skill and knowledge development. Moreover, the startups receive benefits linked to strategic business development acceleration in the areas of strategy and business model improvements, pitching, financing, and strategic partner development. At the same time, corporate accelerators overall aim to increase the competitiveness of established companies running such programs by developing a product ecosystem and the brand, infusing startup culture into the organization and developing customer relationships.

Toward an integrated framework of corporate venturing for organizational ambidexterity as a dynamic capability

“…Leten and Van Dyck ( 2012 ) also confirmed these interlinked mechanisms in the cases of GlaxoSmithKline, SNCF and Alcatel-Lucent, while other scholars have identified them in processes over time, such as in the front-end of innovation (Cantarello et al 2012 ) or along the ‘graduation process’ of CVs (Raisch and Tushman 2016 ). In yet another recent example, Gutmann et al ( 2019 ) illustrated a potentially interlinked-ambidextrous setup in the single case study of the SAP industry 4.0 start-up programme, in which external start-ups were specifically chosen based on their fit with the core offer and the deliberate exploitation of opportunities with direct integration support into the SAP portfolio. This underlines that especially new contemporary forms may play a major role in the pursuit of interlinked-ambidextrous CV.…”

The Role of the Strategic Corporate Accelerator: Overcoming Obstacles of Corporate Startup Engagement

“…Moreover, startups can become suppliers, customers, or partners of the incumbent [17,22]. Gutmann et al [10] provide another perspective suggesting that one outcome of CAs can be customers of the organizing firm benefitting from the enrichment of product offerings through integrated startup solutions. Hence, incumbent firms attempt to enrich products and services with incremental innovation created by the startups, which is then integrated into the offering of the firm [10; 22].…”

“…Thus, providing implications or lists of success factors has provoked considerable attention in the field of CA research (e.g., [15,22]). In general, among the authors who have provided different perspectives on success factors, some patterns could be derived from factors that have been mentioned across multiple publications (e.g., [10,14,17,20]. In that sense, success factors for CAs can be classified into seven distinct categories:…”

“…Furthermore, prior CA literature has been criticized for the fragmented and contradictory typologies and a lack of a deeper conceptualization of the specific roles, and challenges associated with CAs [10,11]. This may be attributed to an extensive stream of CA literature adopting the design elements from the independent accelerator literature to the CA phenomenon (e.g., [2,12,13]).…”

Start-up Accelerator: State of the Art and Future Directions

“…A novelty raised by the authors is the fact that there has been no systematic research referring to current knowledge (Carvalho et al, 2017;Gur 2021;Gutmann et al, 2019;Garcia et al, 2019;Crisan et al, 2021). Carvalho et al (2017) in their review concentrate their efforts to organise knowledge on various types of accel-erators and distinct methods to promote entrepreneurship (Carvalho et al, 2017).…”