FROM POPULAR TO PROFITABLE: INCUMBENTS’ EXPERIENCES AND CHALLENGES WITH EXTERNAL CORPORATE ACCELERATORS

Katja Hutter, Anne Gfrerer and Bettina Lindner
Additional contact information
Katja Hutter: University of Innsbruck, Austria
Anne Gfrerer: University of Innsbruck, Austria
Bettina Lindner: #x2020;University of Salzburg, Austria

International Journal of Innovation Management (ijim), 2021, vol. 25, issue 03, 1-30

Abstract: In search of innovation, incumbent firms are leveraging the creativity, knowledge and capabilities of corporate accelerators and are boosting their innovation engines by collaborating with startups. While this form of collaboration network with its heterogeneous partners is theoretically compelling and growing in popularity practically, the majority of corporate accelerators fails to deliver the desired results. Existing research still lacks an in-depth exploration of corporate accelerators explaining and suggesting how failure and challenges of incumbent firms can be overcome. Twenty-eight semi-structured interviews were conducted with managers and innovation experts across industries and within one of Europe’s biggest corporate accelerators. This study contributes to the field of open innovation and collaboration networks by expanding our knowledge about challenges of corporate accelerators and in particular to decode the difficulties that occur during the different phases of accelerator programmes. Based on the findings, guidelines for practitioners are presented to enhance organisational learning and innovation performance for incumbent firms.

Keywords: Corporate accelerator; collaboration networks; innovation networks; heterogeneity; innovation management; startups; incumbent firms (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S1363919621500353
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wsi:ijimxx:v:25:y:2021:i:03:n:s1363919621500353

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from

DOI: 10.1142/S1363919621500353

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Innovation Management (ijim) is currently edited by Joe Tidd

More articles in International Journal of Innovation Management (ijim) from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tai Tone Lim ().