A systematic literature review on accelerators

2019

Since the establishment of the Y-Combinator in Silicon Valley in 2005, accelerators are an ever-growing phenomenon that beginning with the United States is representative on six continents until today. This should not be surprisingly as nowadays, startups seem to be a major source of innovation, contributing to the invention of novel products and business models by using new technologies and thus are reasonable to secure the secure and development of local economies. To be defined accelerators are institutions that support high-growth, early-stage businesses support to create entrepreneur ́s ideas into sustainable business models through education, mentoring and funding. In counterpart to the until today better known model of incubators accelerators differ as they are limited to a shorter period of time of approximately three month, which leads to the recognition of a higher intensity that as a result shortens to time to discover the sustainability of businesses. Nevertheless, there...

2021

There are competing theories for studying of accelerators and incubators. The absence of a unified understanding hinders start-up progress. Our research clarifies strengths and weaknesses of universitybased incubators to present a framework for improved effectiveness and development. Some research shows structural models connecting investors to other critical incubation mechanisms. Other research shows models relying on the incubator director's experience to embody this connection. In such cases, the incubator's success depends on its manager's ability to establish a viable link between stakeholders. Although the presence of these components for the incubator is essential; ensuring a structural interconnection is vital. Using four cases to establish a list of success factors; our conceptual framework demonstrates these two models and explores their potential.

International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal

Corporate accelerators are a rapidly growing entrepreneurial phenomenon occurring in different business contexts and business models within corporate entrepreneurship. Corporate accelerators are considered as an innovation fostering approach within new ventures provided by start-ups. The aim of the paper is twofold: firstly, to explore the motives behind corporations' engagement with start-ups in launching corporate accelerators, and secondly, to identify the corporate benefits and challenges of this business model innovation. The research design is based on a qualitative interpretative approach exploiting a triangulation of methods by using in-depth interviews (IDI) with corporate managers involved in development of corporate accelerators as well as a focus group interview (FGI) with industry experts. In addition, secondary data were applied to strengthen the exploratory research. The study demonstrates that a wide range of benefits stem from the accelerator activities which can ultimately can initiate changes in large companies. Our research expands on prior findings and suggests that corporate accelerators are driven by internal and external push and pull motives. The study contributes to expanding the scope of corporate entrepreneurship research in regard to the challenges and benefits of corporate accelerators. It provides evidence that corporate accelerators are a source of innovation that can be used to foster entrepreneurial-market logic and entrepreneurial learning.

Corporate accelerators (CA) are a rapidly growing institutional phenomenon in start-up ecosystems. As agile innovation units they offer start-ups fixed-term coaching programs that are supposed to provide benefits for both start-ups and established companies. Although the proliferation of CAs is highly evident, little is known about the efficacy of these programs, and the drivers of performance. Analyzing a hand-collected and novel data set containing more than 200 start-ups across 15 CA programs located throughout Germany, our results suggest that while start-ups benefit from small, specialized and industry-specific programs through synergies and economies of scale and scope; increasing specialization generates also disadvantages for the accelerated start-ups. In particular, lock-in effects and holdup problems may make it difficult to raise follow-up financing after leaving the accelerator program. This paper aims to fill into this gap in existing literature.

Sustainability

Startup accelerators are a highly useful part of the entrepreneurial ecosystem. They are responsible for supporting young innovative enterprises with innovative ideas at the early stages of their development. Problems related to building a business model, raising funds for business development, or determining the directions of development of the products and services offered are often just the tip of the iceberg, which can be a serious obstacle preventing survival on the market and achieving commercial success. Accelerators are entities supporting innovation, which, using the tools and programs they have, can significantly facilitate issues related to running a business by immature start-ups and significantly contribute to overcoming the challenges that constantly appear before them. Due to the importance of innovation in the global economy and its obvious connection with start-ups, scientists in the last decade have clearly marked their interest in the subject of start-up accelerat...

2015

Objectives Accelerators have emerged as an increasingly popular means of supporting entrepreneurial activity with approximately 250 currently operating in both North America and Europe (Salidado, 2013) and there is evidence that survivorship is significantly enhanced when firms have been supported by an accelerator (Fox, 2014). Most accelerators follow a common business model in which there is competitive entry to a program providing support for a limited period (typically three months) to early-stage businesses during which time intensive mentoring and support is given and seed capital is invested in the young business. Using a theoretical framework based on liminality (Turner, 1969), participants in accelerator programs are depicted as undergoing a rite of passage. Studies in liminality suggest that certain processes follow a particular ritualistic pattern in which participants divest themselves of former identities and new identities are formed. During liminal processes, guidance is normally provided to the person: in accelerators this role is taken by mentors who will assist in the formation of the new identity. Studies in liminality point to the importance of threshold concepts (Meyer & Land, 2005) which are types of knowledge that a participant is expected to acquire prior to completion. Using the lens of liminality, this paper examines identity formation by looking at the manner in which it changes during the accelerator support period. What changes occur and what induces changes of identity? The role of the mentor within accelerators is also considered: what is the nature of their relationship with participants and how do they assist in this rite of passage? Prior Work Accelerators are a relatively recent phenomenon and it appears that they have not been examined in peer review journals. Approach A qualitative design, employing secondary sources, will be employed to illuminate the underlying liminal processes existing within accelerators. Results This is a work in progress Implications Accelerators represent an under-researched phenomenon and by using the lens of liminality, the process of intense change can be better understood. Value Accelerators play a crucial role in developing entrepreneurial activity: this study provides value by explaining the effects of Accelerators on participants in terms of identity formation, the role of mentoring and the expectations about acquired knowledge.

Business & Entrepreneurship Journal, 2022

Corporate accelerators have become an important form of corporate-start-up collaboration. According to [1] mm1 (consultancy for Connected Business), two-thirds of all DAX 30 companies in Germany engaged with start-ups via an accelerator in the year 2020. Despite the clear importance of this phenomenon, there is still a lack of understanding of the concrete factors that determine their success. Corporate accelerators can be designed in different ways but business executives are still in the dark about the consequences of these design decisions on the performance. The aim of present study is to determine success factors of a selected set of corporate accelerators based on qualitative data. A database of 109 corporate accelerators was collected from which all Germany based programs (28) were analysed in greater detail regarding their performance and program design. Hereby, the study tests the statistical relevance of 14 potential success factors identified via literature review conduct...

2019

Business accelerators are one of the best sources of financing for seed-stage acceleratorsthe conclusion one can make based on the quite scant accelerator research. However, since the studies of accelerators have mostly based on the data on American top-accelerators, little is known about the success-factors of accelerators in other contexts. This article analyzes whether the success-factors found to influence accelerators are similar to these previously found in a different context of Estonia, where, despite the short period of the free market economy, a highly successful startup ecosystem has developed. To capture the full effect of accelerators in Estonia the complete sample on Estonian accelerated startups and accelerators is provided, which is unique in accelerator research, where mostly crowdsourced, incomplete datasets are used. The analysis from regression models revealed that size of funds gained from accelerators, average yearly sales and employees' growth and being a software company are predictive of success of accelerated startups. The internal and external success-factors that are linked to the fortune of accelerators are explored through semi-structured interviews with accelerator representatives. Accelerators owe their success to their intrinsic qualities, from which social networks creation by accelerator, deal flow/startup selection and reputation were considered important, but the analysis confirms that their external context, most importantly policy environment and presence of human capital, also strongly influence their success and creation.

Social Science Research Network, 2014

Annals of Operations Research, 2023

We study start-up accelerators, a new type of entrepreneurial support organization characterized by its coaching of regular cohorts of startup founders, that developed rapidly after pioneer accelerator Y-Combinator, founded in 2005, had 'accelerated' success stories Dropbox and AirBnB among others. We suggest that accelerators can be analysed as platforms whose function is to relate start-ups and investors within entrepreneurial ecosystems. According to our analysis, leading accelerators play a mediating role in enabling entrepreneurs to attract investors with a higher profile than they would have otherwise. Using propensity score matching, we compare participants to several accelerator programs in North America with similar non-participating start-ups. We measure the prominence of their investors using their centrality in the investor-network. For several top-tier accelerators, we observe that startups who participated in their programs attracted higher profile investors than other similar start-ups that were not accelerated. Furthermore, among accelerators, pioneer Y-Combinator appears to benefit from a winner-takes-all effect, which is typical of platform competition: Not only do investors it connects its participant startups to appear to be of a higher profile, but it is also the only accelerator in our sample whose participants gain access to an amount of early-stage funding that is significantly higher than those raised by the control group.