Unfolding Corporate Accelerators : The Learning Experiences Corporate Accelerator Programs Offer For Startups

Abstract: Background: The Corporate Accelerator (CA) trend has extended beyond high technology industries, gaining global traction across a variety of industries, such as in finance, healthcare, insurance, entertainment and consumer packaged goods. CAs are described as an approach that bridges the gap between corporations and startups, further supporting long-term growth and corporate renewal. When organized effectively, CAs provide a platform that allows both the established corporations and startups to tap into the resources of what one has and the other lacks. Despite its’ many opportunities, some aspects of CAs have also been criticized. In particular, CAs aim to fulfill their corporation’s goals which may lead to discrepancies between the goals of the corporation and the startup. This could potentially limit the level of innovativeness of the startups as well as other learning benefits they aimed to achieve from taking part in the program. Purpose: From an entrepreneur’s point of view, this study aims to understand the learning experiences CA programs offer for participating startups. Method: An instrumental collective case study was conducted in the form of semi-structured interviews from five cases that represented five different CA programs. Conclusion: This study aims to elaborate the existing CA literature through providing insights about how individuals in startups develop new knowledge through taking part in CA programs. The findings of this study suggest that three main factors affect the startup individuals learning experiences in CA programs that consist of; (1) The need for learning that is built upon the background attributes of each startup individual and the stage at which the startup organization is at; (2) The different entrepreneurial support activities that offer the startups authentic learning, generative learning and acquisitive learning opportunities; (3) The learning network offered during the program that consists of corporations, facilitator organizations and other startup organizations that enable the startup individuals to acquire complementary knowledge resources across their own organizational boundaries. Moreover, the findings of this study illustrate that experiences gained during the program are transformed into entrepreneurial knowledge that constitutes to the individual's ability to recognize new opportunities as well as the ability to cope with the liabilities of newness.