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This paper aims to understand technology-based accelerators’ legitimation efforts in an emerging entrepreneurship ecosystem.

This research is based on qualitative inductive methodology using ten Turkish technology-based accelerators.

The analysis indicates that accelerators’ legitimation efforts are shaped around crafting a distinctive identity and mobilizing allies around this identity; and establishing new collaborations to enable collective action. Further, the authors observe two types of technology-based accelerators, namely, “deal flow makers” and “welfare stimulators” in Turkey. These variations among accelerators affect how they build their legitimacy. Different types of accelerators make alliances with different actors in the entrepreneurship ecosystem. Accelerators take collective action to build a collective identity and simultaneously imply how they are distinguished from other organizations in the same category and the ones in the old category.

This study presents a framework to understand how accelerators use strategies and actions to legitimize themselves as new organizations and advocate new norms, values and routines in an emerging entrepreneurship ecosystem. The framework also highlights how different accelerators support legitimacy building by managing the judgments of diverse audiences and increasing the variety of resources these audiences provide to the ecosystem.

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.