Pathology of acceleration programs in corporate accelerators of Iran

Abstract

Purpose

This study was designed to detect the failures in Iranian accelerators. This paper attempts to identify these effects from the perspective of accelerator managers and founders of startups. The main goals of this article are as follows: (1) What are the failures of Iran's acceleration programs from the perspective of accelerator managers? (2) What are the failures of Iran's acceleration programs from the perspective of startup teams? (3) What are some of failures of the acceleration programs that both groups agree on?

Design/methodology/approach

It has been attempted to conduct semi-structured interviews with managers of corporate accelerators on the one hand and startups accelerated in these accelerators on the other. The interviewees were selected using snowball method and consisted of 9 accelerator managers out of 7 accelerators and 15 startups based on 5 accelerators. The analysis of the information extracted from the interviews and coding of the failure identified in the accelerators was performed using the thematic analysis method. In order to assess the validity of this study, an entrepreneurial doctoral student was asked to codify the interviews individually to compare the extracted codes.

Findings

Finally, 34 problems have been identified that are divided into four main themes related to mentorship, acceleration program, acceleration structure and infrastructure and internal startup team problems. Overall, the greatest agreement among the failures identified as wrong orientation by untrained mentors, the lack of complementary in ability and skills of team members, the lack of knowledge of mentors, the lack of acceleration managers in entrepreneurship and the lack of a proper leader in startup teams.

Originality/value

This study aimed to investigate the failures of corporate accelerators in Iran as a developing country, which is the first survey in Iran. We have many researches about the pathology and identify failures of accelerators, but in corporate accelerators, little research has been done. The authors have a classification of failures in corporate accelerators by using thematic analysis. In this study, accelerators' managers and founders of startups were interviewed and 34 failures were identified.

Citation

Heshmati, S. and Shafiee, M. (2021), "Pathology of acceleration programs in corporate accelerators of Iran", World Journal of Science, Technology and Sustainable Development, Vol. 18 No. 4, pp. 405-416. https://doi.org/10.1108/WJSTSD-03-2021-0033