Accelerator niches in an emerging entrepreneurial ecosystem: New York city

Abstract

Although the literature on accelerators, an important and newer model of entrepreneurial support, considers their performance and the definition of the form, little is known about how accelerators populate in a single ecosystem over time. We find accelerators are established by different types of entities such as non-profit organizations, local governments, universities, and even foreign government agencies with different goals. Based on a novel dataset of all 107 accelerator programs that ever operated in New York City, we propose a new way of categorizing accelerators by their founding attributes. We confirm that the emergence of accelerators in New York City started with the entry of non-profit accelerators for the purpose of local economic development. For-profit actors followed. Accelerators began from the periphery of the city’s geographic boundaries, but over time became concentrated in Manhattan. We also observe a shift toward sector specialization. Our contributions are to examine the development of one entrepreneurial support organization over time in one ecosystem, present a method to categorize accelerators based on their sub-niches, and to provide evidence of a catalyzing role of local government in fostering ecosystem emergence.