A systematic literature review on accelerators

Abstract

Over the past 15 years, accelerators emerged as a popular and distinct new form of intermediary organization, playing a key role in supporting entrepreneurial and innovation activities. To date, despite significant growth in accelerators research, there is still little understanding of how different forms of accelerators operate, and what outcomes they produce across different contexts. This paper reviews the existing scholarly research on accelerators using the Context-Intervention-Mechanism-Outcome framework and is based on the analysis of 98 research papers on accelerators published in the last 15 years. The analysis identifies four mechanisms which explain how accelerators operate and the role they play in supporting entrepreneurship and innovation: the validation of ideas and products; the provision of product development and models learning; the provision of support to increase startups' market access & growth; and the provision of support for innovation. The paper identifies the methodological and theoretical gaps in current research and provides avenues to support future research and industry practice.

Socioeconomic Impacts of University–Industry Collaborations–A Systematic Review and Conceptual Model

“…In the context of this study, CIMO refers to how university-industry collaborations are carried out, considering the context in which they occur, as well as interventions, mechanisms, and results in terms of socioeconomic impacts. We extracted the following information: authors, year of publication, title, journal, nature of the study (conceptual or empirical), methodology [15][16][17], and the country of origin of the author's institution [16,17]. We used the context-intervention-mechanismsoutcome (CIMO) methodology to conduct our analysis [14].…”

“…In the CIMO perspective, the contexts analyzed are the internal and external environments that influence behavioral change [14,16]. This systematic literature review identified both external and internal contexts: (1) the external contexts were the socioeconomic conditions and the national and regional laws and policies; (2) the internal contexts were the universities' characteristics, the firms' characteristics, and the researchers' characteristics.…”

Processos em Relacionamentos Interorganizacionais para Desenvolvimento de Capacidade de Absorção em Startups

“…Thus, organizations are driven to find suitable forms and structures to minimize these characteristics that are so disparate between large corporations and startups, bringing them together to develop capabilities that result in innovation. Corporate accelerators are an effective model for this, as they are characterized by mechanisms that support the validation of ideas and products, that provide learning models, and that support growth and market entry for companies that are starting their activities in the same way that the accelerators support innovation (Crișan et al, 2019).…”

“…Among the various mechanisms that explain the role of corporate accelerators, we highlight the provision of support to increase access and growth of startups in the market (Crișan, Salanță, Beleiu, Bordean, & Bunduchi, 2019).…”

Parceria entre grandes empresas e startups que participam de aceleradoras corporativas: benefícios e desvantagens para as startups

“…Uma forma usual e crescente de aproximar startups e grandes empresas é por meio dos programas de aceleração liderados por corporações consolidadas, os quais, desde o início de 2010, aumentaram em todo o mundo (Moschner et al, 2019;Shankar & Shepherd, 2019;Urbaniec & Żur, 2020). Estudos empíricos mostram que as aceleradoras corporativas possibilitam, dentre outros, a prestação de suporte para aumentar o acesso e o crescimento das startups no mercado (Crișan et al, 2019), bem como o desenvolvimento de capacidades em startups, destacando a capacidade de absorção de conhecimento (Cajuela & Galina, 2020).…”