The Underlying Complexities Impacting Accelerator Decision Making—A Combined Methodological Analysis

Abstract

Business accelerators play a key role in the initial critical stages of assessment of commercial viability, offering mentorship provision of funding and protection of intellectual property for product development and refinement. However, little is known about the decision making criteria and detailed analysis of the underlying criteria and interdependencies between the key factors used by accelerator organisations to fund start-ups. This study focusses on the decision making criteria utilised by a leading £21M accelerator programme, largely funded by the European Regional Development Fund for initial stage funding and intellectual property protection for product and innovation commercialisation. We incorporate a multimethodological interpretive based approach based on Day's 'Real-Win-Worth' framework to develop the interrelationships and ranking between the factors. The results highlight the significance and weighting attached to the factors associated with the technical competency of the proposer and evidence of demand existing for the product. We propose a new framework that models the key factor interrelationships offering additional insight to accelerator based decision making.

Case Study – Developing a National Research and Evidence Base for The Health and Wellbeing Chapter of The Welsh Government’s 2023 Innovation Strategy for Wales

“…The pursuit of innovation in health and social care at the national level has been a longstanding goal (Mossialos et al, 2018, Flessa andHuebner, 2018), with key stakeholders constantly facing challenges in overcoming the inertia and complexity of existing structures (Greenhalgh et al, 2017), limited opportunities for experimentation (Fleuren et al, 2004), and difficulties in disseminating successful ideas (Malcarney et al, 2017, Yusof et al, 2008.…”

“…These challenges have led to the development of various strategies and frameworks to promote innovation in health and social care, including the use of networking and collaboration among stakeholders (Fleuren et al, 2004), the identification of human, organisational, and technology-fit factors (Yusof et al, 2008), and the application of the NASSS framework to analyse the role of complexity in technology programs (Greenhalgh et al, 2017). To address these challenges, WG has attempted changes and sustained effort to support an environment and ecosystem which is receptive to adapt and adopt successful innovations in health and social care.…”

“…The models describing innovation push and innovation pull dynamics between organisations have been studied for decades (Godin and Lane, 2013). More recent studies explore the dynamics of innovation push and innovation pull in the context of innovation ecosystems.…”