Bridging the gap between ‘Fin’ and ‘Tech’: The role of accelerator networks in emerging FinTech entrepreneurial ecosystems

Harris, Jack Laurie

doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2021.04.010

Cited by 31 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…FinTech firms use digital technologies to solve problems and reduce costs in the financial services sector. Successful FinTech entrepreneurship requires insight into both the finance industry in order to identify and evaluate potential opportunities and technological knowledge to develop new products and services that provide value and lower costs (Harris, 2021). In theory, FinTech firms should benefit from an integrated ecosystem that allows technical and business knowledge to flow between the finance and technology sectors.…”

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confidence: 99%

Examining the cohesiveness and nestedness entrepreneurial ecosystems: evidence from British FinTechs

Spigel

2022

Small Bus Econ

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It is not clear if entrepreneurial ecosystems are cohesive wholes within a region that support high-growth entrepreneurship across a variety of sectors or if ecosystems are made up of several, nested sectoral-specific sub-ecosystems. This debate speaks to larger disagreements about what entrepreneurial ecosystems are and how they work. This paper addresses this research gap by using a novel methodology based on career history data of founders and top management teams of high-growth FinTech ventures. This method is used to classify the backgrounds of 1,570 individuals in 380 British FinTech firms based on their prior job histories and employers into categories such as technology or finance. The paper finds substantial evidence of nestedness in the ecosystems, but rather than FinTech ecosystems being specialized finance or technology clusters, more generic forms of managerial know-how remain crucial to firm innovation and growth. This suggests that even very advanced ecosystems remain nested, with few cross-over points between different communities.

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confidence: 99%

Examining the cohesiveness and nestedness entrepreneurial ecosystems: evidence from British FinTechs

Spigel

2022

Small Bus Econ

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“…The majority of accelerators targets startups independent of their industry, while some other accelerators purposefully focus on specific sectors such as life science (Kulkov et al, 2021), supply chain management (Fink et al, 2022), or FinTech (Harris, 2021). Compared to other startup support organisations such as innovation labs (Fecher et al, 2020), incubators (Roessler & Velamuri, 2015), hackathons (Kitsios & Kamariotou, 2022), or venture capital (Bugl et al, 2022), accelerators can be delimited by the content and extent of support services (Kulkov et al, 2021), programme length (Beyhan et al, 2021) and maturity of targeted startups (Veit et al, 2021).…”

Section: Accelerator Characteristics and The Corporate Accelerator Me...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Relationship-building in the post-acceleration phase of corporate accelerators: empirical evidence from Germany

Kramer

Kanbach

2023

Int Entrep Manag J

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Corporate accelerators have become a relevant intermediary that connects startups and corporations. Their strategic goal is to establish close relationships between startups and corporations that add value for both parties in the long term. While in principle startups go through an acceleration phase successfully, they may struggle to build meaningful relationships with the accelerator’s corporate parent thereafter. In research, the post-acceleration phase and its challenges for corporations and startups has not been adequately addressed to date. Therefore, the goal of this article is to shed light on how corporations and startups collaborate after startups leave an accelerator programme, and which factors hinder successful relationship-building. Grounding on 21 corporate accelerator cases containing data from 99 semi-structured interviews with corporate accelerator managers and startup alumni of accelerator programmes, we present different forms of post-programme collaboration and outline obstacles of post-programme relationship-building. Our results emphasise a key role of business units in successful relationship-building and indicate legitimacy problems of accelerators within its corporate organisation. We also provide guidance for corporations, accelerators, and startups on how to increase the success of post-programme collaboration by demonstrating manifold challenges of post-programme collaboration and showing ways how to overcome them.

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“…Within the literature it is recognised that early research typically provided ‘only long laundry lists of relevant factors without a clear reasoning of cause and effect’ (Stam, 2015: 1764), which meant the literature was ‘still in search for a clear analytical framework that makes explicit what is cause and what is effect’ (Alvedalen and Boschma, 2017: 893). In response, authors have pushed for more relational (Spigel, 2017) or process-oriented (Spigel and Harrison, 2017) perspectives, towards the utilisation of complex adaptive systems theory and its inclusion of upward and downward causal dynamics (Roundy et al, 2018), to better incorporate evolution and path dependence (Harris, 2021a), or to include inter-ecosystem links (see, for example, Velt et al, 2020).…”

Section: Following the Chaotic Footsteps Of Clusters?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…If Silicon Valley and Silicon Wadi are to be considered two of the most successful EEs, then the well-documented and vital role of government policymakers in encouraging their growth must also be considered as important lessons for EE development (Engel, 2015; Wonglimpiyarat, 2016). Indeed, the emergence story of Singapore’s EE is that government policy makers saw what was happening in Silicon’s Valley and Wadi, decided that Singapore’s future economic development was dependent on having their own EE, and so set about creating one through generous new policies (Harris, 2021a). Thus, while EEs clearly have a stronger focus on entrepreneurship, this first distinction made to separate them from clusters due to differences in emphasis paid to entrepreneurs and government policy makers is not as significant as suggested, and the opposite can often be true.…”

Section: The Conceptual Ambiguity Between Entrepreneurial Ecosystems ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Entrepreneurial ecosystems and clusters: How can economic geographers advance debates for regional development?

Harris,

Menzel

2023

Progress in Human Geography

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The entrepreneurial ecosystem concept is now one of the most popular policy tools for regional development following a surge of interest in entrepreneurship-oriented academic circles, yet has experienced little critical engagement within economic geography discourse. We argue that economic geographers should engage with the entrepreneurial ecosystem concept because (1) it describes a shift in spatial socio-economic organisation that has thus far been underexplored by economic geographers and (2) it is an inherently chaotic concept that requires significant conceptual development, not least in relation to the cluster concept. The entrepreneurial ecosystem concept is considered a close relative and potential successor of the cluster concept, which itself rapidly achieved policy stardom despite academic concerns over its conceptual clarity. We argue that there are significant similarities and intersections between the two concepts with implications for broader regional development literatures, enabling economic geographers to enrich academic debates and consequent policy decisions.

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Bridging the gap between ‘Fin’ and ‘Tech’: The role of accelerator networks in emerging FinTech entrepreneurial ecosystems

Cited by 31 publications

References 23 publications

Examining the cohesiveness and nestedness entrepreneurial ecosystems: evidence from British FinTechs

Examining the cohesiveness and nestedness entrepreneurial ecosystems: evidence from British FinTechs

Relationship-building in the post-acceleration phase of corporate accelerators: empirical evidence from Germany

Entrepreneurial ecosystems and clusters: How can economic geographers advance debates for regional development?

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