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‘Acceleration’, that is, the performance of activities in ever-shorter periods of time, is a distinctive feature of contemporary organizations and societies that is reflected in, and driven by startups’ attempts to scale up their businesses in ever-faster ways. Although prior research has highlighted that temporary organizing is a key way to accelerate the startup process, little is known about how actors do so. Based on a one-year ethnographic study at a startup accelerator, the authors explore how actors enact temporary organizing to attempt to accelerate the startup process. Their analysis shows that this process involves a plurality of partly conflicting temporal structures. As their study shows, such conflicts invoke tensions that actors live out in their daily activities. The authors identify three temporal practices – sequencing, freezing, and merging – through which actors engaged in temporary organizing enact acceleration in the startup process by reconciling these temporal structures. Their study has implications for understanding time in the expanding literature on temporary organizing and acceleration.

This chapter discusses the evolution of business accelerators in Egypt, as a developing country, and how they may be seen as a totally different means for promoting entrepreneurship and not just an extension of the business incubator model. Through exploring the perspectives of six entrepreneurs who were sponsored by the first business accelerator in Egypt and exploring the institutional perspectives of the CEO of the business accelerator and the chairman of a non-governmental organization that supports entrepreneurship, the author will demonstrate the advantages of the business accelerator as an entrepreneurial place. Furthermore, the author will be able to suggest recommendations for policy makers and business accelerators to further develop the model of the business accelerator.

There is an increasing interest in the literature for the characteristics of the entrepreneurial ecosystems and the impacts caused by their activities. Silicon Valley or Israel is widely known as the main entrepreneurial ecosystems, but there are a lot of different cities and countries which are performing a great effort to become a worldwide reference in entrepreneurship. The purpose of this work is to analyze the Spanish and the Portuguese entrepreneurial ecosystems and identify strengths and challenges. The basic characteristics of both countries will be introduced, as well as the relevant points regarding policies for fostering entrepreneurship, tax benefits to entrepreneurial activities, special considerations for social enterprises, investors support and the main challenges faced by each country.

This paper focuses on the potential advantages of strategic investment models in examining firm investment behavior. Strategic investment models are derived from rigorous modeling techniques grounded on formal analytical models, and they have been widely applied in corporate finance and economics to examine the problem of firm underinvestment. In this paper, we present an overview of strategic investment models, including empirical applications that highlight their methodological strengths. We conclude that the empirical application of such investment models in the context of strategic management research presents research opportunities in many new directions.

In a moment where social issues around the world are becoming more and more severe, a call for real impact is very much needed. Current investment into societal solutions that work at scale is not sufficient to get us closer to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Additional capital is required, but it is also essential that it is deployed in ways in which impact is maximised. Focussing on additionality – not just intentionality – and on impact management – not just impact measurement – represents the right direction.

EVPA embarked in a journey towards redefining the impact investment space to clarify the role of different investors. EVPA identifies two main strategies: investing for impact and investing with impact. Investors for impact are those that support innovative ways to tackle societal problems and embrace impact management, using the data collected to refine activities to maximise social impact.

However, despite all the frameworks and guidelines produced in the field of impact measurement and management in the last 10 years, the perception among the community of investors for impact is that there is still a lot to do, highlighting a gap between theory and practice. Investors' networks such as EVPA play a crucial role in filling this gap, supporting members (but not only) in the adoption of appropriate IMM practices. In this respect, EVPA has developed several responses (e.g., five-step IMM process, a training partnership with Social Value International, in-depth case studies) and is fully committed to strengthen its efforts in the years to come.