Search results

Business accelerators have recently received increasing attention as important cogs in business ecosystem development. However, their exact role in the ecosystem is not yet well known, especially outside the IT sector. The purpose of this study is, therefore, twofold: to determine the position of life science accelerators in the business ecosystem and the attributes of support for companies and to identify key features of the life science accelerators that contribute to the change in business ecosystems.

The authors offer an exploratory case study of five life science business accelerators and analyze the main factors affecting the companies and the whole business ecosystem. The authors build upon the scarce literature on business accelerators and consider a new type of accelerator that specializes in life science projects and study its role in the transformation and evolution of the life science industry.

The authors have defined the role and key parameters of life science accelerators that influence the existing business ecosystems: (1) cooperation with other regions and countries, (2) development of entrepreneurial skills among participants of the business accelerators program and (3) a project on demand-based approach.

The key parameters of the life science accelerators allow to concentrate these efforts on the activities that are most demanded by the market. Business accelerators can increase the created value for other program participants.

Business accelerators facilitate new venture creation, and most research on the subject focuses on the performance of accelerated ventures. This paper aims to understand what entrepreneurs value in business accelerators and how this differs for women- and men-led ventures. The authors suggest that venture growth stage may play a mediating role in these relationships.

The authors use the resource-based view perspective to develop models of women- and men-led ventures’ valuation for business accelerator services. They also draw upon a database of 2,000 US entrepreneurs.

The authors found that, compared to men, women entrepreneurs place greater value on knowledge transfer benefits (i.e. business skills education) but lower value on networking benefits offered by accelerators. However, there are no significant differences in the valuations for these services between genders for high-growth ventures. Additionally, compared to men, women leading high-growth ventures place greater value on access to potential investors or funders.

This research serves as a practical guide for accelerator administrators and marketers who seek to adjust their business support offerings based on the value placed for the services by different populations of entrepreneurs.

The authors provide a business accelerator user’s perspective and highlight differences in valuation of accelerator services by women- and men-led ventures at different stages of venture growth.

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.

Inspired by an efficacy debate, this paper aims to understand to what extent do entrepreneurs value business accelerators and what contributes to this value. And as entrepreneurs consider accelerators to be a viable alternative to traditional business incubators, the research seeks to compare these startup support options.

Guided by resource-based theory, the researchers constructed a variance model and analyzed it using quantitative methods based upon data collected from 205 accelerators users as well as 66 incubator users for comparison.

Results indicate that the accelerator users find the programs to be very valuable for improving their business outcomes. Moreover, the users feel the program experience to be valuable regardless of whether their businesses ultimately survive. Knowledge- and culture-related resources contribute significantly to users’ perceptions of value. Findings indicate notable differences in the perceptions of accelerator versus incubator users.

The research contributes to the ongoing academic debate concerning the efficacy of accelerators and provides a model for predicting user value. The research is limited to the USA.

Research serves as a practical guide for prospective accelerator users, as well as provides valuable insights to accelerator administrators and marketers for enhancing their programs.

The study uniquely provides a user’s perspective and highlights distinct differences in the perceptions between accelerators and incubators users.

Situated within a context where high-skilled migration is increasingly being featured in policy debates around the world as part of strategies to foster innovation, this chapter examines the ways highly skilled entrepreneurs in tech traverse their entrepreneurship and their subsequent migration via business accelerators. Business accelerators, which are not just promoted as pre-seed funds in financial circles, but also by migration policy as sponsors of migrant innovation, play an important role in the lives of young migrant ventures. However, based on interviews with entrepreneurs that used policy-endorsed accelerators in the United Kingdom, this chapter emphasises that both finance and migration policy considerations are just tiny specks in a larger picture. This chapter shows the boundary-fluid lives entrepreneurs in tech lead, and puts forth that it is the symbolic capital that they amass through their active use of accelerators, that they then convert to economic value. Consequently, it is argued that discussions around social integration of migrants into ‘mainstream’ society need to be viewed with a new lens, as the symbolic capital thus accrued, is at a truly transnational level.

In this chapter, the author explore the role of entrepreneurial ecosystems in terms of focusing on the importance of accelerators. Entrepreneurship is crucial for the ongoing success of accelerators but seldom has research focused on the ecosystem perspective. Organizations habitually use their contacts and networks to facilitate business growth through being included in accelerator programs. This means that comprehending how different entities are embedded in an entrepreneurial ecosystem can provide learning benefits. In the ecosystem literature, the role of accelerators has mainly been studied from the individual and firm-level demonstrating the relationship between entrepreneurial behavior and firm performance but there is more need to emphasis the role accelerators play in the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Suggestions for managers involved in entrepreneurial ecosystems are suggested in this chapter as a way of encouraging more involvement in accelerator programs.

This study aims to explore Accelerators and their practices in sustaining start-ups within their innovative programs for these companies based on the resource-based perspective. Moreover, with an ever-increasing demand for Accelerators amongst start-up companies, this study also demonstrates the importance of Accelerators, as it pertains to new venture creation.

This research uses an exploratory case study approach to examine a comparative view of leading Accelerator companies in the USA and Korea based on resource support.

The results of this study show that there are a number of differences between Accelerators of the two countries in terms of the resources they support for early-stage start-ups. The findings also show some similarities. However, in Korea, the Accelerator landscape is limited, where mentorship, resources and investments are not readily accessible, resulting in low success rates for Korean start-up companies. These limitations have had a negative trickle-down effect when providing entrepreneurs with strong access to resources and investors, which highly affects the success rates of early-stage start-ups.

In terms of the resource-based theory, this study contributes to the growth of early start-ups by emphasizing the role of the accelerator and suggesting the extent and impact that entrepreneurs have access to resources and investors.

With significant growth in start-ups around the world, the necessity for start-up funding and mentorship has increased drastically. Start-up companies need various types of assets, systems, knowledge and information to achieve their goals. In Accelerators, start-ups receive all the aforementioned resources while also improving their entrepreneurial skills. Start-up companies have many options in seeking investors who support both tangible and intangible resources to boost growth. While there is a wealth of information on traditional funding methods, there are few studies that shed light on the role of Accelerators from the resource-based point of view.

The purpose of this article is to develop an integrative framework of accelerator design to answer the question of what activities accelerators perform and how they function within a structured framework. Research on the functioning of accelerators as a mechanism for startup engagement produced multiple empirical results. However, the comparability of relevant research is strongly limited, currently hindering theoretical developments. Existing accelerator design models often differ and only partially overlap, which leaves extant literature with a fragmented and discordant conceptual understanding.

Based on a meta-synthesis method using qualitative analysis of 36 accelerator design articles, an integrative framework is developed. After identification of relevant literature, a renowned method for extracting, coding and synthesizing data on individual and cross-study level is applied to identify accelerator design constructs. Eventually, identified accelerator design constructs are integrated into a framework resting on the activity system lens of business model design.

The article reconciles fragmented knowledge on accelerator design and shows how accelerator design can be holistically conceptualized by 32 key activities clustered in eight design dimensions. The framework is complemented by an initial guideline for measurement. The findings further highlight formerly disregarded aspects of governance and community formation from a processual and structural perspective.

This article is the first to present a comprehensive picture of accelerator design integrating multiple empirical findings of prior research into a single coherent framework. This framework offers a shared foundation for future research exploring the delineations, functioning and impact of accelerators. From a practical perspective, the article provides managers of accelerators a guide to design, review and improve programs according to their value creation goals.

This study focuses on the lived experiences of early-stage women founders in a venture accelerator context. In particular, this work explores how gender shapes entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) development in early-stage female founders in the venture accelerator context.

A qualitative, feminist-sensitive research methodology was utilized, with empirical evidence drawn from interviews with fifty one female founders and four accelerator managers located in four, competitive accelerator programs located in the Northeastern United States.

Study findings highlight how accelerators contribute to ESE development. Data also shows how the micro-processes related to masculinized discourse, culture, as well as mentorship and training, contribute to the “othering” and minimization of women during early-stage venture development.

This study contributes to the accelerator literature through a provision of insights into the ways a dominant, masculinized discourse and culture alienates female participants, making them feel “othered’, and resulting in a lack of fit with critical networking and funding opportunities. Second, this study builds on self-efficacy theory by applying a gender lens to the areas of mastery learning, vicarious learning, social persuasion and mental state, thus illuminating ways that the masculinization of these processes negatively disrupts the ESE development of female founders. Third, this study builds more broadly on the women's entrepreneurship literature by showing how masculine norms and culture ultimately impact upon the well-being of women in an early-stage entrepreneurship context.

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?

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.

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.

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.